DEFRA’s chief scientist has urged the food industry to embrace its current resources, insisting today’s technology can be used to address the overarching issues in increasing production amid climate change.
Bob Watson said that, while R&D funding is vital, the issue related as much to food availability - in terms of using current resources, such as reducing waste by using food more efficiently - as it did to increased production.
Speaking at the Soil Association’s Future of Food conference in London, Watson said a “business as usual” attitude would not work and radical reform of international trade was vital in ensuring global food security against a backdrop of climate change.
Creating the best access to good seeds, finance and routes to market, Watson argued, would provide a better solution than subsidies on which producers might become reliant.
He said: “We can address today’s hunger problems with today’s technology. Research is important in looking at diseases that will become more prominent in hotter climates, but using today’s technologies more appropriately, with decreased post-harvest losses.
“We also need to look at initiatives like paying farmers for the ecological services to incentivise short-term change. It can no longer be thought of as an issue of production alone, but a combination of traditional knowledge combined with research.”
Watson said the damage to the climate through greenhouse gases already done has irreparably affected the environment until around 2040, but action needs to be taken at next month's crunch climate conference in Copenhagen to prevent severe changes - which could see the UK up to 70 per cent drier in the south by 2080.
Soil Association chief executive Patrick Holden said a “business as usual” approach would not help, but warned businesses should take careful steps in addressing issues created by climate change and the food security conundrum.
He said: “If we can get some changes implemented in something like catered food then we can effect some real change. But there are no prizes for going out of business and if you change too quickly there can be penalties for being an early adapter, so we need to support those farmers who are willing to change.
“We need to bury the hatchet with many of the differences evident in the food industry, so in 10 years' time we can have a real solid plan based on positive inspiration and replace a moribund, industrialised food culture.
“Climate change has invoked cynicism and guilt, but if we can build a campaign based on inspiration and not fear then we can show how serious the consequences are while presenting solutions.”
Holden was speaking on the release of the Soil Association's new report, entitled Food Futures: Strategies for resilient food and farming, which calls for a new cross-governmental food strategy and recommends raising the target for greenhouse gas cuts in agriculture from a “pathetic” six per cent to at least 20 per cent by 2020, in line with other sectors.
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