The terms 'food security' and 'self-sufficiency' are often used interchangeably, particularly by farm union leaders arguing for high levels of domestic production underpinned by government subsidies.
But as agribusiness consultant Carl Atkins notes in Farmers Weekly food security and self-sufficiency are two very separate things and should not be confused. 'Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food,' he said.
Being 100 per cent self-sufficient in a particular foodstuff could actually be risky if there was an interruption to domestic production.
The current self-sufficiency figure for the UK is 64 per cent, having peaked at 78 per cent in 1985. However, that figure does not take account of tropical foods we cannot produce in the UK like bananas. If we take account of them, the figure is 77 per cent.
Part One of the National Food Strategy points out that the UK has been a net importer of food since the 1830. Part Two will examine whether there is an optimal level of self-sufficiency the UK should target, whether in aggregate or for a particular sector. Hopefully not: for me, it looks too much like Soviet style planning.
There was also an outbreak of level-headed thinking in the correspondence columns of Farmers Weekly. A correspondent notes that for many years there has been talk of value added production, but the industry focuses on commodities. The obsession with benchmarking and least-cost production emphasises this point.
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