The UK government has today unveiled its much touted ‘Green Food Project,’ which it claims will provide direction towards creating ‘green growth’ in the UK’s food and drink supply chain. Defra, the department responsible for the Green Food Project, described it as “A major study into how Britain’s entire food system must change to keep food affordable without destroying nature.”

Defra has been using its ongoing development of the Green Food Project as a response to questions around food policy for a number of months; the Environmental Audit Committee, which assesses government policy based on sustainability and environmental performance, said in May that the UK’s food policy requires a more cohesive approach, and urged for health, education and environmental considerations to be linked up to promote responsible attitudes to food. The Audit Committee levelled its criticisms at the government after compiling a report on ‘Sustainable Food’ in which it criticised the government’s lack of commitment to ensuring healthy, environmentally sound and equitable food production.

Last month, a report by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England criticised the lack of government support for local food networks, which it found to be more environmentally and socially responsive. The report’s authors lamented, “Despite their critical importance to the health of our high streets, local economies and much loved landscapes, local food networks are under-recognised and poorly supported.”

A Defra spokesperson responded to both the MPs in the EAC and the CPRE report on ‘food webs’ with assurances that the Green Food Project would pave the way for the improvements the groups demanded. Defra hopes the Green Food Project, unveiled today by Farming Minister Jim Paice, will serve as a riposte to the organisations and individuals who have questioned its claims to represent the “greenest government ever,” and instead accused the government of pushing for "economic growth at all costs."

Speaking at the Project’s launch at the Great Yorkshire show, Farming Minister Jim Paice said that the new government project had brought together representatives of farmers, manufacturers, retailers, caterers, environmentalists and scientists, “For the first time… to work out how to reconcile the competing demands of producing more food and improving the environment.” The minister said the report outlines the first steps towards reducing energy and water use in food production whilst increasing crop yields, introducing more innovative technology, improving conservation management and boosting entrepreneurialism in the food industry.

The farming minster said, “With our increasingly hungry world every country must play its part to produce more food and improve the environment. Britain already punches above its weight, but we’re a small island with limited space, so we’ve got to show leadership and play to our strengths more efficiently. There are already many examples of cutting edge innovations in all sectors, but these are the exception rather than the rule. We are talking about the need for a culture change across the entire food chain and this is the first step in a long-term plan to make that happen.”

Green food Project

Following today’s release, the Green Food Project steering group will begin to meet regularly to enact the changes suggested in its report. However, although the farming minister said the group would regularly evaluate movements towards a greener food industry, the improvements will not be measured using targets or timeframes. Mr Paice elaborated, “We’re not talking about setting Soviet-style targets but an overall approach in which the whole food chain pulls together. Whether it means embracing new farming technology or people wasting less, we’ve got to become more sustainable.”

Faced with problems including a reduced availability of water, an erratic climate, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, the need to switch from polluting fossil fuels and feed an increasing population, the authors of the Green Food Project examined how production and consumption could change in the future across a number of sectors to become more sustainable. They looked at different aspects of the food supply chain from raw agricultural products through to processed food products and dishes and came up with five areas of focus; wheat, dairy, bread, curry and a variety of geographical areas.

The diverse group acknowledged the unsustainable nature of current production; they state in the Green Food Project report, “The National Ecosystem Assessment showed that in the past, increases in the productivity of farmed land have resulted in declines in other ecosystem services and the Climate Change Risk Assessment has shown us how climate change could further undermine these. Biodiversity decline on farmland is well-documented; for example specialist farmland butterfly species declined by 39% between 1990 and 2009, and arable plants are the UK‟s most threatened group of flora. Agriculture and rural land management are the second most common reason for water bodies failing the standards set out by the Water Framework Directive.”

The authors suggested focusing developments around research and knowledge exchange, investment, improvements to land management, increasing understanding of ‘ecosystem services,’ and addressing consumption and waste.  The report’s authors also advocate supporting young people in the food industry and once again pledge support for biotechnology, especially genetic modification, despite the Environmental Audit Committee’s assertions that the government had taken an undemocratic approach in pushing for GM, which it argued would benefit business more than society and made calls to respect public opinion.  

Responses to the report

Responses to the report’s release have been mixed; Martin Harper, Conservation Director at the RSPB welcomed the Project as the first step on the road towards sustainability and linked its findings with work on lower impact farming the RSPB is doing on its own experimental farms. He said, “It’s clear that food production and consumption urgently need to change. Currently, both the environment and the world’s poor are losing out, while increasing consumption is taking its toll on precious and finite resources. I am very pleased that Defra has initiated this discussion – the Green Food Project is an important  first step towards working out what England’s contribution should be to help food production become more sustainable and shared more equitably. We need to be thinking and planning at the landscape scale to get the most from our land and stay within environmental limits - both within England and globally.”

However, although some organisations have pledged support for the report and the group’s recommendations, in an echo of the recent Rio + 20 summit, some have criticised the government for lacking commitment and failing to act with any urgency to tackle poverty and pollution. Given the Malthusian list of stressors affecting the global population outlined in this and previous government reports, calls to introduce energy efficient toasters and grow more herbs and spices for curries, to reduce the carbon footprint from importing, seem rather ineffectual.

The undoubtedly business-friendly nature of the report has left others sceptical. Despite repeated calls for “a paradigm shift in agriculture” and former Defra chief scientist Bob Watson’s oft repeated assertion that “business as usual will not work; the system is broken,” some have warned that Defra remains overly reliant on the perpetrators and beneficiaries of environmental degradation in its quest for solutions. WWF spokesperson Mark Driscoll said the Government’s own Foresight report provides compelling evidence for the urgent need to redesign the food system, and pointed out that the current system is not only a major cause of the destruction of the natural world but is also causing health problems for those who overconsume. The organisation has argued the drive to ramp up food production without greater reflection is a “fool’s errand;” instead it suggests “The question is not how much food the UK should produce – it is not the UK’s role to feed the world - but how we address the underlying problems of our food system such as waste, access and diets.”

Driscoll, head of the Food Programme at WWF UK, which contributed to the Green Food Project, said “We support the collaborative approach taken by the Green Food Project as a - very small - first step. However, what’s really important is the need to take action so we move towards a more equitable and sustainable food system which addresses the twin global challenges of sustainability and hunger.”

Although the majority of commentators have expressed support for the report’s findings and see it as a tentative first step towards greater susainability, those with environmental concerns in particular have warned that it does not go far enough in its recommendations to create a genuinely green food supply chain in the UK. Tom MacMillan, Soil Association Director of Innovation, suggested that the report contained many positive aspects, but its lack of commitment risked rendering it ineffective.

He commented, “We particularly welcome the report’s call for ‘two-way flows of knowledge, ideas and innovation’ from the lab to the field and back again; a big part of fixing our food system is to make sure that farmers and the public have a much bigger say in the research that is done in their name. This report is weak when it comes to the key challenge of making it easy to eat a diet that doesn’t seriously damage our own health and that of the planet. We believe that the government should be bold enough to lead a much more robust discussion about the links between production and consumption, if we are to tackle the twin challenges of environmental degradation and the growing problem of diet-related ill-health.”

The Green Food Project was created with input from groups and industry bodies including the National Farmers Union, Country Land and Business Association, National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, AHDB, RSPB, WWF, Linking Environment and Farming, British Retail Consortium, Food and Drink Federation and Defra. The Green Food Project report is available here.

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