EXCLUSIVE: Don't eat our world
SUPERMARKET shelves cannot continue to heave under the strain of produce from around the world because the impact on the environment is too great, a leading food expert has warned.
Professor Tim Lang told the WMN there must be a "total transformation" in the way Britons live, ending the over-consumption of the world's food supplies, slashing car and airplane use and using land to produce the maximum amount to eat.
People would have to get used to eating less meat and not being able to "eat the world" with stores full of thousands of items shipped in from across the globe.
Only the uplands of Britain should be used to rear animals for food if the land could not be used for growing crops, he said, insisting consumer expectations had to change.
Prof Lang, professor of food policy at City University, said the Government had to intervene to force through policy changes to the way Britain fed itself.
"The reality is that changing diet looks almost inevitable. For one very simple reason – a rich country like Britain over-consumes in terms of resources. Britain doesn't feed itself. It uses other people's land, it uses other people's water, and it is using other people's minerals.
"If you extrapolate for the rest of the world to eat like the British, you would need three planets... five planets... something like that.
"At a time when population is going up... climate change scenarios look extraordinarily sobering. It seems to me it is almost inevitable that we are going to have to change our diet."
While stopping short of calling for enforced vegetarianism, non-meat eater Prof Lang added: "It may be that uplands which cannot grow grain and cannot grow other crops will be useful for meat-rearing.
"It may be that animals will be useful for eating and using waste, which is what they used to be. They have been made into ends in themselves. We have got to reduce that focus on meat as an end in itself."
Prof Lang was recently named as a key figure on the new Council of Food Policy Advisers set up by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn to overhaul the Government's approach to the subject. He also attended the recent launch of a major Commons inquiry into securing Britain's food supplies for the next half century.
Prof Lang stressed that Government policy had to be "more discriminatory", focusing not just on the level of self-sufficiency but the differences between fruit, vegetables and meat.
"Of course price is important but is it not the only determinate. We know that sustainability has got to be a number one value. Anyone who says that price is everything, is speaking nonsense.
"The biomass on which humanity is parasitic relies on a terribly thin layer around the planet. It is astonishing that we still have a food system like we do."
Prof Lang was hopeful that in Government policy, there was the "beginning of the recognition of the importance of climate change. It is pathetic our response to it. Car use should go. Airplanes should go. Our whole lives need to be restructured. A total transformation of how a country like Britain lives has got to happen".
He said the culture of eating in Britain must change in the same way as during the two world wars.
"We have all got used to walking in and thinking food shopping is having 30,000 items of food. Why? No-one buys 30,000 items of food.
"How can we engender a change in that culture, an expectation that I can eat the world?"
He said that television chefs like Jamie Oliver had begun to communicate the message that "food is not just about skills and cooking, it is actually about how you want to live your life". He added: "It is nonsense when people say you can't change it or it has got to be left to consumers. Events change things. Consumers can change."
Prof Lang pointed to the Government's recent carbon labelling project as proof politicians must take the lead to make things happen.
"We have all got to grow up actually. We have got to say actually Government has got to play its part, business has got to play its people and people have got to play their part.
"At last there is a recognition that food policy is not just about food safety. Life depends on it; there is a big agenda that needs to be addressed. How we address it, that's a matter for politicians. I don't say it lightly but life depends on us getting it right and at the moment, we are not."
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by a g rawlings, truro
Sunday, December 28 2008, 5:27PM
“Why is it that very few of you ever mention the little man in the street that finds it impossible to start his own business? Like Butchers and Bakers, and Candel stick makers that find it impossible to trade against the the big companies, who have got the small businesses by the nuts.
Would you call the supermarkets Dictators? Ask the Farmers.”
by henry blince, torbay
Sunday, December 28 2008, 1:41PM
“" if you buy an orange in a corner shop it's just as likely to have come half way round the world".
of course it has, you can't grow oranges in this country. But smaller greengrocers will source what they can locally because it makes more sense and local produce sells well. I know of at least two greengrocers in my area that buy local produce, I've sold my own garden produce to them.
Remember also that supermarkets chuck out a disgraceful amount of food, whether it's off or not, because all their package produce - which includes vegetables, generally about double the price of their loose product - has sell-by dates that have to be observed.
It's all very well to blame supermarkets and there's no doubt that they're ruthless, and duplicitous but remember, they only exist because the public support them. If you really want to help small shops - and you should - then use them. Their produce is certainly better and you may be pleasantly surpised how well their prices compare.”
by Francis Kirkham, Crediton
Sunday, December 28 2008, 12:39PM
“Professor Lang is quite right, we should all value food more and shop more selectively. Food used to be the main item of expenditure in the average domestic budget, but now we have got used to having cheap food and spending more on leisure.
If people bought more local produce, and took an interest in how it is produced, it would be better for both our health and the environment. For example, meat that is produced from grass-fed animals is not only much richer in vitamins and other health-giving compounds, but reduces greenhouse gas emissions by increasing carbon storage in the soil. Cultivation does the opposite.
Growth of cereals - for animal feed or for feeding humans - requires big inputs of pesticides and fertilizers that consume large amounts of oil and energy in their manufacture.
Increasing the organic matter content of the worlds farmed soils by about 1.5% could absorb as much carbon as the excess we have emitted over the last 100 years or so.
And mixed, rotational farming - as opposed to large acreages of continuous cereals - is far better for wildlife.
The message is: think - and ask - before you buy.”
by Alistair Dark, Australia
Sunday, December 28 2008, 12:52AM
“Very nice article. I'm extremely pleased to hear Britain has decided to listen to this type of counsel. The world of tomorrow will be a more peaceful place because of it.”
by Carl, Exeter
Saturday, December 27 2008, 7:04PM
“Take it easy Marie. I'm not sure the good professor was talking to you. More the politicians and populace who think the supermarkets are truly here to serve us. Clearly, you removed your head from the sand some years ago. I'm sure Tim is seeking the same effect, although sand maybe stating it too politely for some of the vested interests who I'm sure his comments are aimed at.
He's one of the 'good guys'...
Carl”
by jenny McCracken, Melbourne
Saturday, December 27 2008, 5:42PM
“The comments on this page seem to have gone way off the beam, but I applaud Prof Tim Lang and his efforts, Britain is so far ahead of Australia in confronting the realities of the looming climate crisis and in particular in educating about the inefficiencies and unsupportable nature of the current western diet.
Shifting to a plant based diet is the safest, cheapest quickest way to have a positive effect on reducing emissions, and it's better for you - win - win”
by Justin, Cornwall
Saturday, December 27 2008, 1:04PM
“I love the way they are driving this new agenda of the enviromental cause on the back of globalization.This is all to convenient for are Global Masters. They use the excuses of globalization and Global Warming to say to the public we must find new ways of sustaining are selves. When large scale industrialized farming has been designed to create greater demand for food production on a global scale. The cost in producing food in other countries has never been cheaper for the supermarket's,like Tesco,Asda,sainsbury etc.....migrant workers with low cost wages contribute to lower costs on food production and then the cost of shipping/flying is lumped onto the consumer.The supermarkets are a man made part of the globalized marketplace. The world doesn't need them in the first place.The consumer's of the western world have been contitoned to except the bottom line that the supermarket culture has wider benefit's because it produces more choice and less exspensive food.People have lost the importance of producing/cooking/buying local food,the only people benefiting from all of this is the multi-national companies and the highly rich elites who produce the agenda's which we adhere to as a world society.We are guided by the hand of Global Corporatism way too much in the western world. The elites have designed a clever system from which we may never be able to escape from. They are only to willing to see a world in the future driven by scientific agro business than local organic farming methods. Geneticaly modified food production will be the order of the day across the world as companies strive to produce cheaper and cost effective food production,but at what cost to the earth's bio-sphere????. Nobody truly knows the impact that GM farming will have on the health of animals and humans....long term. We have far too many hidden agenda's from within inner circle of the power elite for the public to be made fully aware of the situation. If the public are fed dissinformation by phoney Central Govt run by business,how can we see the clear objectives ahead of us as a world population.”
by Marie Butler, Plymouth
Saturday, December 27 2008, 11:33AM
“This Professor should be ashamed of himself for stating something that over a million of us have lived by for some years now. This is why local farmers markets are on the increase. I note that he does not point out that with the increase in fuel prices it will become more expensive to import fruit from across the globe. Perhaps then we will see all our orchards replanted with varieties that are naturally disease free, not GM modified professor.”
by Oliver, Exmouth
Saturday, December 27 2008, 11:11AM
“Guys, this has nothing to do with the monarchy. Republics like Germany and France are similarly affected by these issues. And neither are supermarkets specifically the problem; if you buy an orange in a corner shop it's just as likely to have come half way round the world.”
by Jerry Jones, Dorset
Saturday, December 27 2008, 11:05AM
“I can't say i'm a fan of the monarchy in any way at all. They set a bad example on the whole to the people they rule. The best two women they've had in recent years are no longer part of it,one is dead and one has thrown out. I'm sure they will suffer greatly in the credit crunch. Prehaps the Corgies will suffer. We must give our farmers more support and that is vital.”