Giuseppe
Emeritus
Rosie Boycott: A lack of food security is London's achilles heel [guardian.co.uk]
London's achilles heel
The capital imports 80% of its food and is vulnerable to shortages. But with political will, it has the potential to feed itself
Rosie Boycott - guardian.co.uk, - Wednesday October 01 2008 09:02 BST
Rocked by the credit meltdown, London's financial heart isn't its only weak point. The capital is acutely vulnerable in terms of its food supplies.
During the last fuel crisis, Sainsbury's chief executive, Justin King, warned the then prime minster, Tony Blair, that the country could run out of food in a mere three days if oil supplies continued to be interrupted.
Yet, despite these warnings, and the now widely-accepted inevitable decline of cheap oil, the government has never taken the issue of the food security of London, or the UK, seriously.
And nowhere in the UK is more vulnerable than our capital, which imports approximately 80% of its food.
Food in general travels much further today than ever before ? between 1978 and 1999 "food miles" increased by 50% and now some 40% of all freight is related to food. Some 29% of the vegetables and 89% of the fruit we eat, for example, are imported. And in spite of organic food's environmental benefits at the point of production, over half of that consumed in the UK is currently imported (although this is declining as UK production capacity increases).
According to the pressure group, Sustain, one basket of imported organic produce could release as much CO2 as an average four-bedroom household does through cooking meals for eight months.
The same would, of course, hold true for an identical basket of non-organic produce (and without the environmental benefits offered by organic production).
Some 95% of all the food consumed across the world involves oil at some point in its production ? through the use of mechanised production, fertilisers, transportation and packaging. As global oil supplies diminish, so the threat to our overall food security increases.
The globalisation of food chains make us vulnerable both to sudden interruptions in the supply chain, as well the spread of diseases such as bird flu.
Both would be addressed by relocalising the growing of food, which would not only benefit health, but also strengthen communities which have lost touch with the very stuff of life ? the food we need every day.
How far could London go towards producing its own food?
Assuming a catchment area of some 100 miles, the answer is a great deal. No one, at this moment, exactly knows how much, but the proposed creation of new food hubs, coupled with a determined effort to grow vegetables and food in London's already extensive (and largely unused) green spaces will hopefully see a dramatic alteration of the city's food security, an alteration which would also bring the cityscape to life.
Our vulnerability to the threat of a serious food crisis cannot be ignored. For too many years we have left the means of supply and delivery of our most basic human needs entirely in the hands of free-market forces.
This has proved disastrous to the health of the nation, it has added to rising concentrations of CO2 that threaten to trigger runaway climate change, and it has left us wide open to serious food shortages.
Since the second world war, we have grubbed up 80% of our orchards, and it is now estimated that there are more people in prison than there are farmers left who could bail us out. Thus, not only do we need to re-skill people as gardeners, we also need to examine how we use the spaces in our cities to ensure that we have a chance of freeing ourselves from our current dependency on multinationals who have only their shareholders' interests at heart ? not the most basic needs of a nation, and of a planet.
As the financial hub of the city crumbles, we have to find a way to build a food system that will make us all the more resilient to future shocks; either to the climate, or to the financial system that is driving the climate beyond its limits.
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<cite cite="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/01/food">Rosie Boycott: A lack of food security is London's achilles heel | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk</cite>The capital imports 80% of its food and is vulnerable to shortages. But with political will, it has the potential to feed itself
Rosie Boycott - guardian.co.uk, - Wednesday October 01 2008 09:02 BST
Rocked by the credit meltdown, London's financial heart isn't its only weak point. The capital is acutely vulnerable in terms of its food supplies.
During the last fuel crisis, Sainsbury's chief executive, Justin King, warned the then prime minster, Tony Blair, that the country could run out of food in a mere three days if oil supplies continued to be interrupted.
Yet, despite these warnings, and the now widely-accepted inevitable decline of cheap oil, the government has never taken the issue of the food security of London, or the UK, seriously.
And nowhere in the UK is more vulnerable than our capital, which imports approximately 80% of its food.
Food in general travels much further today than ever before ? between 1978 and 1999 "food miles" increased by 50% and now some 40% of all freight is related to food. Some 29% of the vegetables and 89% of the fruit we eat, for example, are imported. And in spite of organic food's environmental benefits at the point of production, over half of that consumed in the UK is currently imported (although this is declining as UK production capacity increases).
According to the pressure group, Sustain, one basket of imported organic produce could release as much CO2 as an average four-bedroom household does through cooking meals for eight months.
The same would, of course, hold true for an identical basket of non-organic produce (and without the environmental benefits offered by organic production).
Some 95% of all the food consumed across the world involves oil at some point in its production ? through the use of mechanised production, fertilisers, transportation and packaging. As global oil supplies diminish, so the threat to our overall food security increases.
The globalisation of food chains make us vulnerable both to sudden interruptions in the supply chain, as well the spread of diseases such as bird flu.
Both would be addressed by relocalising the growing of food, which would not only benefit health, but also strengthen communities which have lost touch with the very stuff of life ? the food we need every day.
How far could London go towards producing its own food?
Assuming a catchment area of some 100 miles, the answer is a great deal. No one, at this moment, exactly knows how much, but the proposed creation of new food hubs, coupled with a determined effort to grow vegetables and food in London's already extensive (and largely unused) green spaces will hopefully see a dramatic alteration of the city's food security, an alteration which would also bring the cityscape to life.
Our vulnerability to the threat of a serious food crisis cannot be ignored. For too many years we have left the means of supply and delivery of our most basic human needs entirely in the hands of free-market forces.
This has proved disastrous to the health of the nation, it has added to rising concentrations of CO2 that threaten to trigger runaway climate change, and it has left us wide open to serious food shortages.
Since the second world war, we have grubbed up 80% of our orchards, and it is now estimated that there are more people in prison than there are farmers left who could bail us out. Thus, not only do we need to re-skill people as gardeners, we also need to examine how we use the spaces in our cities to ensure that we have a chance of freeing ourselves from our current dependency on multinationals who have only their shareholders' interests at heart ? not the most basic needs of a nation, and of a planet.
As the financial hub of the city crumbles, we have to find a way to build a food system that will make us all the more resilient to future shocks; either to the climate, or to the financial system that is driving the climate beyond its limits.
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