Food For Thought

How can giving over 10% of farm land to climate change ever be sensible?

On 22nd October 2024, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer warned that Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, with at least four cargo ships targeted with one carrying 6,000 tonnes of corn, showed Putin was willing “to gamble on global food security in his attempts to force Ukraine into submission”.

Well, wind the clock forward and his Government is today bragging how ten per cent of farmland will be turned over to Net Zero projects, whether rewilding ‘unproductive’ arable land or covering farmers’ fields in wind turbines and solar panels.

We are told these virtuous deeds will not affect productivity, and instead greater yield can be produced from land which isn't seized by HMRC under the hideous inheritance tax changes or forced to become mini woodlands or solar sites.

We are even told that solar sites can somehow help nature, as if plants themselves have no direct need for photosynthesis and are happy to live in permashade under acres of silicone instead. Indeed, where we do have established solar farms, such as the Llanwern Solar Farm post-construction reports have shown high levels of pollution in water both inside and outside the site, a 99 per cent reduction in bat activity and local extinctions of the breeding population of lapwings. The results are so concerning that the Welsh Government is conducting an emergency review.

But type the question into Google and the top, sponsored hits, largely tethered to one report by the obviously objective Solar Energy UK, tries to tell us that solar farms help biodiversity. With some digging the only stuff I could find on agrivoltaics is all still extremely hypothetical and admits that while grassland species will suffer, those that prefer shade will thrive. You don't say!

Meanwhile the UK Food Strategy Report from 2021 is the main event being cited by the Government today. It's the Net Zero Bible when it comes to telling us all will be OK - exactly what it was commissioned to do, so the foregone conclusion should surprise nobody. At no point does it tell us somehow turning farm land into Net Zero experiment sites will help food security or boost nature. Instead it rests on the proviso that this has to be done, and will be a tough ask. Let's quote it, shall we?

“We already ask a lot from the land of this small and densely populated country. And in order to meet the UK’s legal commitments on carbon emissions and nature restoration, we will have to ask a lot more. Some farmland will have to be repurposed or adapted for environment projects. Some will have to be farmed at lower yields to enable nature to thrive. Some will have to become higher-yielding, low- carbon farms, using new technologies to increase productivity without polluting the earth. This is a major transition.”

Well, actually, none of it has to be done if we decide to drop the self flagellation nonsense of Net Zero which permeates every Government decision, regardless of the UK’s abject inability to change anything internationally in terms of overall carbon emissions, even with the most stringent of measures.

But while we decide our own food security isn't a big deal compared to pretending we can save the planet, our enemies are doing the opposite.

If you want to anticipate what your enemies might be planning, look at what they are doing themselves.

China’s food self-sufficiency dramatically fell from 94% in 2000 to 66% in 2020, but driven by fears that global food trade could become weaponised, since 2023, China has attempted to increase local food production by expanding its agricultural land.

Why, then, are we about to do the opposite, giving over 10% of farm land to rewilding, solar farms and other Net Zero targets?

Indeed, much of the anti-Western axis’ warfare centres around economic perma-crisis, from forcing global inflation via OPEC reducing barrel production to spike energy prices, to transiting international currencies away from the dollar, to controlling maritime routes, which account for 90% of trade. This is why Iran backs Houthi rebels attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. This is why Russia annexed Crimea and wants to land grab critical infrastructure in the Black Sea. This is why China uses the Belt and Road Initiative to seize strategic sea ports around the world, even making artificial islands to claim sea territory thousands of miles offshore and having the blueprints for commercial shipping bases from Colombo to Columbia.

China will soon dominate global maritime trade via operating or owning 91 active port projects, giving it a foothold in every continent except Antartica. The Maritime Silk Route has now reached 117 ports across 43 countries, posing a significant economic and military security threat to the West.

Put simply, the more we rely on resources being shipped to us from around the world, the more vulnerable we are to inflation when maritime routes are interrupted or supply chains hampered, or worse still, and this may sound extreme, blackouts and famine.

Food security should be a cornerstone of UK national resilience, but is increasingly vulnerable to external supply shocks. UK Government reports such as Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre’s Global Strategic Trends and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s Food Security all make plain the inextricable tie between UK national security and food security.

Currently, the UK produces 60% of all food available for consumption. Britain last produced enough food for itself in 1846, before entering an era of gradual agricultural gradual decline. At the start of the First World War, we were importing 60% of our food. Blockades and maritime warfare during the world wars meant we had to suddenly convert large swathes of pastures and parkland to rapidly expand domestic food production.

Dig For Victory became a major pillar of the domestic war effort, yet during neither conflict did the UK attain food self-sufficiency, meaning the rationing of key food items while we still imported 56% of all calories consumed.

It is easy to see how a particularly wet harvest period as was seen between October 2023 and March 2024, where parts of the UK had monthly rainfall totals double the 1991-2020 monthly averages, could severely hamper food availability based on grain and vegetables without imports. Similarly, a large scale outbreak of bird flu, or Foot and Mouth disease, could drastically reduce poultry, protein and egg stocks, driving up prices which alongside growing energy costs, tip the most vulnerable into food poverty. That is before any sort of Global conflict or supply chain disruption, be it accidental via another pandemic or deliberate through naval conflict or blockades, could signficantly reduce the amount of food we can get into the country.

In 2023, 70% of the UK’s land at 17 million hectares was used for agriculture - and we still can't feed ourselves.

In 2010, Defra wargamed what would happen if the UK was cut off from its main trade partners to see if we would be able to self sustain. The answer was stark. It would only be possible if all land were used for crop production rather than livestock. Unless you fancy a solar panel sandwich.

An article in the RUSI Journal last year looking at food security and geopolitics recommended a more radical approach of specifying a minimum level of food that has to be produced domestically, using subsidies to boost agricultural production for future resilience. It even pointed to urban gardening as well as promoting careers in the rural economy.

Instead Starmer’s Government are ensuring family farms aren't passed down and land is turned over to mad Green Agenda targets instead of feeding the nation.

If I were an enemy of the United Kingdom, I would see the Labour Government’s actions as painting a massive target on our backs. Not only have we given up getting our own oil and gas from natural reserves, we are sacrificing food self sufficiency too. It makes us so incredibly vulnerable at a time when it is patently clear global domination is being carried out through asymmetric economic and resource warfare, not invading forces.

It is the basic tenet of all human warfare since the beginning of time, that battles over land and resources are at the crux of rivalries, invasions and hostilities.

Do we think by turning our miniscule patch of floating land on the earth's surface to save the rest of the planet from warming up is going to win us enough moral brownie points that the economy will boom as a just reward and manna will literally rain down from heaven rather than relying on the need to grow food in fields?

Much like the argument over fossil fuels, it is far better to be a producer and exporter than Oliver begging cap in hand for some more gruel.

I can only imagine that Starmer's lot are either blissfully unaware of the dangers they could be sleepwalking us into, or on their recent trip to China agreed to soften the UK up nicely for a Beijing economic takeover.

Either way I won't be taking my chances. I'm going to move out of London and learn how to garden. For if history tells us anything, it's that the next big disaster is guaranteed not to have been predicted nor planned for.