Environment Secretary says we must all take responsibility for our food

11th January 2010

By Hilary Benn

It’s only in the last few decades that we have felt able to take food supply for granted, but the truth is now apparent. We cannot take it for granted any more.

Food security is as important to this country’s future wellbeing – and that of the world’s – as energy security. Securing both must be our priority.

Sixty years ago, at the end of the Second World War, Clement Attlee’s government published the UK’ s first Food Strategy. Its aim was to ensure the nation’s food security in the years ahead.

I am now publishing the Government’s new Food Strategy – Food 2030. Why? Because we need once again as a nation to see why food production matters.

Food shapes our landscape. We spend £173bn a year on food and drink. It provides a livelihood for more than three and a half million people. And it is, of course, about sustaining life itself.

Food 2030 is a national strategy, but it recognises that we live in a global marketplace. And the UK needs to stay competitive in that market which is already challenging, and is going to get tougher. The Strategy sets out what we have to do to secure our food for 2030 and beyond, and how each of us must play our part in helping to make this happen.

It is a big challenge, yes, but it is also a big opportunity for farming. We need to do three things. First, we need to produce more food. Second, we need to do it sustainably. And third we need to make sure that the food we eat safeguards our health.

Hilary Benn is the Environment Secretary and Leeds Central MP. This is an edited extract of a speech that he delivered yesterday at the Oxford Farming Conference.

 

Read the full extract at the Yorkshire Post

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