A committee of MPs, tasked with assessing the performance of Defra policy, has criticised the department's laissez faire approach to food security in a report released on Tuesday, and demanded it show more leadership on the issue.

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The Efra MPs found that the greatest challenge to food security in Britain is from extreme weather caused by climate change. Committee members called on Defra ministers to do more to address the effects of climate change and also work on the ageing demographic of the UK's farming population, to ensure the sector remains viable.

Tuesday's release deals with the food production and supply dimensions of food security. Another report dealing with waste and social aspects of food security will follow later this year.

Food security – achieved when all people have access to sufficient food – was initially understood to operate on a national level, but has evolved to emphasise on individuals enjoying access to sufficient food, marking a simultaneous narrowing of focus and widening of scope and responsibility. Efra's report deals with food security in the UK, as the Committee's remit only extends to the current government's practice.

Anne McIntosh, Chair of the Committee said on Tuesday, "Complacency is a genuine risk to future UK food security. If we want our food production and supply systems to be secure, Government and food producers must plan to meet the impacts of climate change, population growth and increasing global demand for food."

The Efra Committee chair continued, "At least three Departments are now responsible for food security—Defra, BIS and DECC.  To ensure coherent planning and action, overall strategy must be led by Defra, who must ensure a robust approach right across Whitehall."

Sustainable Intensification

Government authors of the Food Security report called on Defra to stem declining national self-sufficiency in the UK and address plateauing yields of key cereal crops. Wheat yield levels have not increased for over 15 years in the UK, and are also stagnating in other global breadbasket regions; as the IPCC report noted earlier this year, climate change is already beginning to impact upon yields in several global regions.

The UK is currently only 68 percent self-sufficient in foods which can be produced here; this figure has fallen from 87% 20 years ago.

Efra MPs backed 'sustainable intensification' as a means of addressing these challenges. Sustainable intensification – loosely the idea that more food must be produced using fewer inputs and no extra land converted to agriculture – rose to prominence with the publication of a Royal Society report in 2009. Critics have dismissed the term as oxymoronic or an 'empty signifier', a buzzword that doesn't actually signify any real object or agreed upon meaning.

In 2012, a report from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food – which embraces sustainable intensification – acknowledged that the concept "has been interpreted by some as coterminous with current high-input, high-output Western modes of production. As such, the concept has been endorsed by some interest groups, particularly the farming industry, and criticised by others, particularly those from within the environmental community."

An alternative concept, agroecology, which is similarly loosely defined but generally understood to have a greater sociological focus, has received the backing of environment and anti-poverty charities rather than industry groups, as well as UN food security bodies and independent scientists behind the seminal 2008 IAASTD report.  

Dr Anna Dickson, who worked on the report, told Farming Online that the government's interpretation of sustainable intensification would include greater focus on soil science, means of producing domestic protein for livestock and reducing emissions from the sector. Dr Dickson did agree that the term is loosely defined and that no specific practices or actions are currently being endorsed or discounted as part of the approach.

GM crops

The Efra report also gave over a full chapter to genetically modified foods. The 400 expert authors of the IAASTD Report – hailed as the most comprehensive examination of food security concerns to date – found GM to be a complicating issue at best a problematic at worst. The IAASTD authors expressed a number of reservations related to the proprietary nature of most GM solutions, and the lack of long-term safety or environmental monitoring in any global region where the crops are widely grown.

Even so, the Committee urged the government to "lead a public debate to counter food safety fears among consumers about GM foods [and] ensure a more evidence-based approach to EU licensing of GM crops."

Europe's food safety and environmental regulations are based on the 'precautionary principle', a risk-averse approach which dictates that, where evidence is incomplete, it is the responsibility of a party wishing to take a contested action to demonstrate that it is not harmful, rather than of those investigating it. As such, it is evidence-based, but unpopular with manufacturers of GM crops and pesticides, examples of areas where intellectual property and trade secrets appear to interfere with independent research in forming a balanced evidence base.     

Dr Dickson maintained that EU regulatory hold ups criticised by the Committee were mainly "political" in nature.

Although understanding of the concept of food security has changed somewhat in recent years, the Efra Committee looked at the idea from a national perspective; they did not mention the UK's growing poverty and its impact on food insecurity in the report. Dr Dickson said that social issues, including access to food would be examined in an upcoming report, for which evidence gathering will begin in the autumn.  

The Trussell Trust – a leading food bank charity – announced in April that 913,000 people had been referred to its food banks in Britain in 2013-14, a "shocking" increase on the 347,000 food insecure people the group helped in the previous year.    

Upon releasing its report, the Committee made the following recommendations:

• Supermarkets to shorten supply chains to reduce threats of disruption;
• UK farmers to extend seasonal production of fresh fruit and vegetables in coordination with the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board, and local and central Government;
• Government to reduce dependence on imported soybean for animal feed, as increased demand for protein from emerging economies threatens current supply lines; and
• Government to produce a detailed emissions reduction plan for the UK agricultural sector.

Reactions to Efra's recommendations

Commenting on Tuesday, Efra Committee chair Anne McIntosh said, "If we are to curb emissions and adjust to climate change, we need a significant shift in how the UK produces food. For instance, livestock production contributes 49% of farm-related emissions, so we need more research to identify ways to curb this. Farmers also need better longer-term weather forecasts and more resilient production systems to be able to cope with severe weather events such as the floods that devastated the Somerset levels last winter."

A Defra spokesperson said, "This report recognises the UK’s food security is well protected. We invest £450 million every year to uphold it but we are not complacent which is why our £160 million Agri-Tech Strategy is investing in developing new resilient varieties of crops, more efficient use of water and a world class centre of agricultural innovation. We are confident our efforts will help us meet future demand for food."

Soil Association policy officer Louise Payton welcomed the report, but qualified her support, saying, "We agree wholeheartedly with the EFRA Committee… when they say we need a 'significant shift in how we produce our food' – however we think this also means we need to shift the way we currently measure food security.

"Rather than measuring agricultural output as yields per hectare, we need to measure how efficiently we produce our food. Currently looking just at yields masks the high levels of inputs with subsequent impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. And when it comes to agricultural emissions, we strongly welcome the report's call on the Government to produce a detailed plan for how the agriculture sector should reduce its emissions. This must be a plan for orderly progress in cuts to meet the Government's target of 80% cuts in emissions by 2050."

Payton continued, "We also welcome the recognition from Select Committee that food security requires more funding for farm-scale research – it will be innovation at the farm level, led by farmers, that will yield the next agricultural revolution. Cutting-edge technologies are all very well, but they usually only provide generic solutions that too often do not fit the specific, practical needs of farmers."

Speaking in 2012, former hill farmer and professor at City College London, Tim Lang called on the government to introduce a cohesive food policy, that will pave the way not oly for national food security but for a sustainable, socially just food system. Professor Lang said, "We have to be growing more... Whereas over the last twenty to thirty years we have seen a steady decline in the amount of food that Britain grows, and to governments this hasn't mattered, there is only now a creeping realisation that actually it does matter."

Although the food policy professor's vision for future food bears some similarity to the Efra committee's recommendations, there are also radical differences. He said, "We need a food policy; you can't just sit back and leave it to Tesco et al. The retailers and the food supply chain that they are gatekeepers for are locked into a totally unsustainable vision for food. We have to think long-term; what would a decarbonised, water reduced, socially just food system look like?

"We have to invest in colleges of agriculture, which have been turned into equestrian fantasy lands for the middle classes escaping the city. Actually, these are about a basic element of the economy, growing food for people. We have to invest in skills."