Press Release - World food shortage means domestic production policies already outdated

World food shortage means domestic production policies already outdated.  

It is time for politicians, and supermarkets, to take a look at the international food situation, give up their outdated approach to constrained agricultural production, and introduce new strategies that take account of increasing global hunger and growing commodity shortages.

So says the National Beef Association which notes that less than 50 per cent of the world population grows its own food because more people are moving into new cities - and as a result there are already global shortages of basic foodstuffs like bread and rice.

“It is hard to believe that in discussions over the direction of the latest CAP Health Check policy makers in the EU, and the UK, have still to acknowledge that despite increasing international affluence a bigger proportion of the world’s population is going to bed hungry,” explained NBA director, Kim Haywood.

“Current agricultural policies place more reliance on imports than they should do because they are still aimed at reducing the domestic production of temperate products that British farmers excel in and are targeted almost exclusively at encouraging non-production, social and environmental based activities through the Rural Development Programme instead.”

And the NBA wants to encourage retailers to accept that British consumers will soon feel extremely uncomfortable at importation from countries that do not have enough food of their own – and will be looking to supermarkets to adopt policies in which food for sale in the UK has not been taken from other people’s mouths.

“Retailers currently feel they can woo middle class consumers, and occupy the moral high ground, if they push production policies onto their farmer suppliers which embrace the over-dominant environmental and wildlife conservation principles which were adopted when temperate food was in plentiful supply,” said Ms Haywood.

“They need to appreciate that the world has changed and it is already a matter of urgency for UK and EU agriculture to produce more of what domestic consumers require from local resources and to be able to do this as efficiently as possible too.”

“Consumers are going to feel a great deal more comfortable if the food they eat is home grown, is not tainted by being imported from countries which need increasingly more of the food they produce for themselves, and is not only grown under sound environmental principles but is grown with maximum economic efficiency too.”

“This means that efficient farmers need to be encouraged to produce more, high provenance food, on a reasoned, cost plus, basis. Consumers who are aware of what is happening are not going to be happy if the food they eat is imported and arrives on their plate at the expense of hungry people in the country in which it was grown,” Ms Haywood added.

For more information contact:

Kim Haywood, NBA director.   Tel.  0131 336 1754