George Monbiot makes many good points (Farmers fear life outside the EU, but it could mean a rebirth for rural Britain, 11 January), including free markets’ impact on small farmers whose incomes fall in times of plenty. He could have said more on food security. Climate change, including gas escapes from frozen deposits, is a growing threat but pests, diseases, routine weather and even large volcanic eruptions (eg Tambora, 1815) can create havoc. So who is actually responsible for food security, here or abroad?
“Britain can always import” is the reply despite a falling pound, but a recent Russian drought caused a grain export ban which could spread if global supplies struggled. Fisheries are exhausted, good British land is vanishing under development, yet nobody wants the bill for food storage. Instead surplus food yields quick profits via livestock feed, biofuels, brewing or even cosmetics.
There are various possible improvements but cutting waste may be simplest. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates that over 30% of global food production never reaches shops or markets while food wastage in supermarkets, restaurants, shops, homes, canteens and airlines is massive. Feeding human food to livestock is wasteful, as are over-eating, too many cash crops, killing then spurning edible animals and (until recently) fishing throwback.
Improving food security won’t be cheap or popular but is easy if supplies are the priority. If Britain faced shortages, though, why should anyone rescue a rich country that fecklessly produces far less food than it could?
Iain Climie
Whitchurch, Hampshire
• George Monbiot is on the right track. But I’m not clear why he won’t allow continuing financial support for ecologically sensitive food production. I’m a small, part-time farmer raising pedigree beef cattle and at the same time planting trees and trying to restore the ecology. Without “subsidy”, I would either have to subsidise this enterprise myself out of other income or hand the land over to a bigger or more intensive farmer, who might well trash it. Many producers below the very largest would be faced with similar decisions. Does George really want all his food to come from City-based absentee landlords or overseas corporate agribusiness? Financial support for agro-ecological producers – and only them – would be a payment for provision of public goods, not a subsidy.
Richard Middleton
Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway
• While the prospect of putting right much that is wrong with our current Tory-determined agriculture is attractive, George Monbiot should recognise that sheep and goats, along with pigs and cattle, are farmed not only for their meat but also for their milk, cheese and wool or hides. You have to factor these into the economic argument or any comparison with other forms of farming will be invalid.
Furthermore, there is nothing to stop us reconfiguring the way we use agricultural labour. Any tales of cockneydom, for instance, would be incomplete without the recollection of good times enjoyed hop-picking in Kent, while plenty of British students have spent their summers harvesting grapes in French vineyards. Granted, the weather conditions the approach to these, but a properly enforced national minimum wage, with no gangmaster-led rip-offs, minus unrealistic picking quotas, would be a far better way to attract our own unemployed, plus those getting by in the gig economy, so it is theoretically easy enough to keep the produce coming. Polytunnels and automated picking machinery are already familiar in some sectors, so the handpicked stuff might eventually be restricted to hipster markets, but we don’t have to carry on as we are.
This country used to be a byword for innovation in agriculture; can you really believe we have lost it?
John Starbuck
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
• It is wrong to assert that sheep grazing is wasting land that could be used for other purposes, and that it is ecologically harmful. Sheep grazing is directly responsible for the creation and management of chalk down land, which is the aesthetic and ecological treasure of southern Britain; while the uplands of the rest of the country are not suitable for anything else, which is why the sheep are there. Without sheep grazing, both would degenerate to scrub. Woodland would take thousands of years to regenerate, if at all. As I prefer home-produced natural fabrics on my skin, as opposed to imported or synthetic fabrics, I am happy to continue subsidising sheep farming, with or without the EU. Read some paleogeography George.
Michael Heaton
Warminster, Wiltshire
• While true hill flocks may now be uneconomic without subsidy as they do produce very little, the vast majority of the sheep meat we eat is produced on improved grasslands. These flocks are profitable and could survive Brexit if we are not swamped with subsidised imports.
Our case is typical of many upland farms. The land is too poor to grow food crops such as wheat or potatoes so we feed livestock on rotational grass and forage crops. If we were to stop producing lamb and beef the farm could be turned over to wildlife but that would mean more food imports, wildlife being displaced in another part of the world, and the loss of this family farm and the employment it gives.
Luke Gaskell
Melrose, Scottish Borders
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