Except for the occasional Vietnamese sandwich at Pike Market of a weekend, I haven’t had bread in ages. And I don’t drive a car. Bio-fueled or otherwise.

Who knows there’s a food crisis?
The early signals are there, but the world seems to be sleepwalking towards disaster, by Magnus Linklater

The causes are many and various, but at their heart is a change in global consumer habits that has crept up on us almost without our noticing. In China and the Far East, growing wealth has been accompanied by a taste for Western diets, including, principally, beef, which is now being imported in increasing quantities. There was a time when the idea of an American-style hamburger would have turned the stomach of the average Chinese; not any more. McDonald’s is rolling out a chain of drive-through fast-food outlets in China’s 30,000 petrol stations, and opening restaurants across that vast country to cater for a new appetite for Western meat.

The world market for beef, and the resulting need for cattle feed has coincided with a decline in the production of grain, as the maize farmers of America switch from producing their standard crops to growing biofuels as an alternative source of energy. Worried by the instability of oil and gas-supplying states throughout the world - from Russia to the Middle East - the US Government has encouraged farmers to turn their fields over to producing ethanol. Production of this alternative fuel is predicted to rise by 30 per cent by 2010. As one farmer put it: “Once I grew food for a bullock, now I grow fuel for a Buick.”

Enter Sir Richard, heralding a new era of carbon-free aviation travel by sending one of his passenger jets across the North Sea, its tanks brimming with biofuels. His feat is, of course, widely applauded, with giants of the global-warming era such as Bill Clinton and Al Gore congratulating him on a pledge to spend $3 billion on developing his alternative Virgin fuels. So, just at a time when we should be considering how best to increase our production of grain, we in Britain are switching off one main source of it.

Here then, one might imagine, would be an opportunity for Britain, with its long tradition of highly efficient farming, to begin filling the gap. …

The Common Agricultural Policy began switching its grant system away from production towards more environmentally friendly schemes. Farmers were encouraged to grow verges round their fields, where wild life could flourish. Hedges, ripped out to increase the size of fields, were carefully replanted. Ponds, small copses, water verges and species-rich grassland were actively encouraged. It did wonders for biodiversity, and made a great deal of money for some. My East Anglian farmer friend reported happily on the marked improvement the new grants had made to his bottom line.

He is less happy now. With wheat at £180 a ton, he would dearly like to rip out the thickets and meadows where birds and bees so happily congregate, and go back to doing what he is best at - producing grain. But he is locked into a ten-year scheme and, for the time being at any rate, he is unable to make the switch. Elsewhere, there are some signs of flexibility: in Scotland a new scheme is being introduced, aimed at encouraging farmers to co-operate, and become more competitive and more market-orientated. But overall there is little sign that policy-makers have grasped the enormity of what has happened. The UK is now barely 60 per cent self-sufficient in food.

I’m torn. I like ponds. But I don’t much like third world countries starving to death. Can’t we compromise and just blame China for it all?

Date: Mar 6th, 2008 · Comments RSS · Tags: Food