Q&A: Will England’s National Food Strategy help tackle climate change?

The NFS is the culmination of more than 2 years worth of meetings and dialogues with market leaders, academics, policymakers and the general public.

The federal government has actually committed to producing a white paper and propositions for future laws in reaction within the next 6 months, although the early action from UK prime minister Boris Johnson has been “noncommittal” to a number of the NFS propositions, according to the Guardian.

Last week, sequel of Englands National Food Technique (NFS) was released, providing a broad overview of the state of the “food system”– a comprehensive term that covers the production, processing, transport and intake of food– in England..

In this Q&A, Carbon Brief examines the report and describes how its recommendations align– or do not line up– with the UKs environment targets and decarbonisation goals.

The report, which is more than 150 pages long, sets out 14 suggestions for the UK government to think about, consisting of monetary rewards, reporting and trade standards and targets for long-term change in the food system..

The very first part of the technique, published in July 2020, offered recommendations for the government to address food insecurity and appetite in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The newly released 2nd part has the specified objective of supplying a “extensive strategy for changing the food system”..

What is the National Food Strategy?

The NFS has definitely brought these concerns to the forefront, Edward Davey, the international engagement director of the Food and Land Use Coalition, tells Carbon Brief.

The NFS was commissioned by the UK federal government in 2019 as the very first independent review of the federal governments food policy in nearly three-quarters of a century.

The report itself calls the food system “both a miracle and a catastrophe”. While the current food system can feeding the “most significant international population in human history”, it states, this comes at a high ecological expense. The report notes:.

Its objective was to supply a roadmap for transforming the food system from its existing state to one that is healthier for the world and the population..

” The international food system is the single greatest contributor to biodiversity loss, logging, drought, freshwater contamination and the collapse of aquatic wildlife. It is the second-biggest contributor to climate modification, after the energy industry.”.

The scope of the report covers England alone, it keeps in mind that the home nations “food systems are so firmly interwoven as to be in locations inextricable”. It continues that it hopes the devolved governments “may in turn find some helpful concepts” in the method.

This report by @food_strategy has some interesting and far reaching concepts that would indicate a huge modification for the better in our food system and make us all much healthier. I hope that these plans will be taken up by this government. https://t.co/gl5rZJCrhO— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) July 15, 2021.

The response to recentlys release saw members of parliament, celebrity chefs and even rockstars weighing in on its significance.

Some have criticised the recommendation to tax wholesale sugar and salt as unreasonable or as disproportionately impacting lower-income households. Others say that the procedures set out in the report do not go far adequate towards making the food system more sustainable.

Davey includes that, in his view, “every nation on the planet would gain from doing something of this kind”.

Why is the food strategy important for tackling environment change?

Research suggests that the food system is accountable for about one-third of international greenhouse gas emissions. And the numbers have to do with the very same for the UK, Dr Marco Springmann, a population health scientist at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, tells Carbon Brief. (The NFS report puts that figure at 19%, however different research studies draw various borders around what counts as the food sector.).

” Theres rather a great deal of siloed believing about the food system. So, from the point of view of integrated national policymaking that provides, its great.”.

Almost half of all food-related emissions are because of agriculture, including rearing animals. The methane produced by cows and other ruminants is “estimated to have actually caused a 3rd of total global warming since the industrial transformation”, the report notes.

The food system has seen significantly smaller reductions in sector-wide emissions since 2008 as compared to the economy as a whole: economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions have actually reduced by almost one-third given that 2008, however food-related emissions have actually reduced by just 13% over the same time..

Other significant contributors to the emissions include food, transportation and fertiliser manufacturing and product packaging..

” Without dealing with the emissions of the food system, it will not be possible to fulfill those climate modification responsibilities [laid out by law] and to add to mitigating climate modification.”.

Under its dedications to the Paris Agreement, the UK has promised to lower emissions from 1990 levels by 68% by 2030. The government has also set a legally binding target to attain net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Springmann states:.

Trying to create a healthier population while farming in a less destructive way needs cooperation across disciplines, Davey informs Carbon Brief. He says:.

In addition, virtually all of the gains made in the food sector have been because of cleaner energy and increased performance in the energy sector. Modifications due to agriculture have actually been negligible– as seen by the large green bar in the chart below.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector as a percentage of the 2008 emissions in that sector. Source: The National Food Strategy, Part II.

What parts of the food method could make the most significant influence on climate change?

Davey calls the recommendations a “good starting point”. He adds:.

” The concern is how rapidly will those reforms truly address the environment challenge … I think the jurys out. Is it not as enthusiastic as it should be, from the point of view of what the land sector needs to do to attain the UK nationwide targets? I do not understand. Its certainly an action in the best direction, however theres probably an argument that its not enthusiastic enough.”.

The proposed framework utilizes the “3 compartment design”, which makes every effort for a balance between semi-natural land, low-yield farmland and high-yield farmland to fulfill the targets of both sustainability and food production.Investing ₤ 1bn in UK Research and Innovation and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), as well as smaller sized centres to spur development to “create a much better food system”. Introducing obligatory reporting on a range of metrics for food business employing more than 250 individuals. These metrics would consist of the tonnage of food waste generated.Creating a national food system data program, which would permit services and the government to evaluate their development on the objectives laid out in the report.

A number of the recommendations made in the report relate in some way to environment change or environmental sustainability. These recommendations consist of:.

What are the restrictions of the food strategy in addressing climate modification?

The commissioning of the report– it was led by entrepreneur and restaurateur Henry Dimbleby– implies the report itself “shows a bit of a skewed focus” towards business-focused services, Springmann states.

Gill also notes that the report, while extensive, does not completely think about the unintentional consequences of its suggestions. For instance, a much greater percentage of fresh vegetables and fruits is wasted than meat. The suggestions to eat less meat might increase the amount of food waste.

” If you take the food system as a holistic thing, then you truly need to attend to all sort of concerns. And if you wish to attend to appropriately the ecological issues, plus the health concerns, you actually need to deal with the overconsumption of animal-sourced foods in our diet plans.”.

The food system “is very intricate”, Gill states, “but I do not believe thats any reason for not in fact highlighting a few of those concerns right at the start”.

For example, the recommendation towards buying development lists alternative proteins as a crucial location in need of research study financing. Springmann states, the alternative-protein industry is currently really strong. He tells Carbon Brief:.

The report likewise “truly shied” away from taking a strong position on reducing meat intake, Springmann says, with effect on both the environment and public health. He says:.

” There are currently a lot of meat replaces on the marketplace and even more so when you think about natural meat replaces like more beans, lentils and those examples … Explaining more clearly that sustainable and healthy diet plan does not always require to consist of processed meat options would have been necessary, but that was missed out on there and instead this sort of pro-business angle was taken.”.

The recommendations “appear to be nearly sort of looking backwards rather than looking forward”, Prof Maggie Gill of the University of Aberdeen, informs Carbon Brief. She includes:.

Limousin beef livestock in a barn feeding on hay, Selside UK. Credit: John Bentley/ Alamy Stock Photo.

” Another thing that seems to be missing out on is that foresighting, wheres the world going to from other sectors … Theres going to be a transformation in farming … And its going to take years [for the recommendations in the report] to come to fulfillment by which time the world may have altered.”.

How does the food method address the completing interests of farming land usage and land use for carbon sequestration?

Nature-based options, such as peatland remediation and afforestation, are anticipated to play a major role in numerous nations and business net-zero targets, however a number of these need the repurposing of farming land.

In order to resolve these completing interests, the report requires a nationwide land-use strategy to finest allocate land to nature, carbon sequestration and farming.

The report notes that with the right rewards for farmers to repurpose their land, the strategy might be equally beneficial towards farmers and the environment. It states:.

” Implementation of any of those recommendations really requires political will … The recommendations themselves could have been more progressive, however even the ones that are there dont appear to resonate extremely much with policymakers that are in power at the minute.”.

UK land location divided up by purpose. About 70% is devoted to agriculture, primarily livestock and animals feed and pasture. The right-hand side of the chart, utilizing the very same scale, shows how much land is utilized abroad to produce food for the UK. About half of the total land usage takes location overseas. The combined acreage for rearing beef and lamb for UK intake is larger than the UK itself. Source: The National Food Strategy, Part II.

The federal government has dedicated to producing a response to the technique, consisting of proposals for brand-new legislation, within the next 6 months..

” The kind of land that might provide the best environmental advantages is often not very agriculturally efficient. The most productive 33% of English land produces around 60% of the overall output of the land, while the bottom 33% just produces 15%.”.

The report itself calls the food system “both a wonder and a catastrophe”. The proposed framework utilizes the “three compartment design”, which strives for a balance between semi-natural land, low-yield farmland and high-yield farmland to meet the targets of both sustainability and food production.Investing ₤ 1bn in UK Research and Innovation and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), as well as smaller sized centres to stimulate innovation to “develop a much better food system”. These metrics would consist of the tonnage of food waste generated.Creating a nationwide food system data program, which would permit services and the federal government to evaluate their development on the objectives laid out in the report. The right-hand side of the chart, using the exact same scale, reveals how much land is utilized overseas to produce food for the UK. The teal bars suggest the direct emissions associated with the supply chain of each product, while the yellow bars show the carbon “opportunity expense”, implying the amount of CO2 that could be sequestered in the land used to produce that food.

Overall carbon expenses (kgCO2e) per kilogram of numerous food. The teal bars show the direct emissions associated with the supply chain of each item, while the yellow bars show the carbon “opportunity cost”, indicating the amount of CO2 that could be sequestered in the land used to produce that food. Source: The National Food Strategy, Part II.

” Globally, the greatest potential carbon advantage of eating less meat would not actually be the decrease in emissions, but the chance to repurpose land so that it sequesters carbon.”.

Minimizing meat consumption would likewise help minimize the pressure on land resources, the report discovers. About 70% of the landmass of the UK is devoted to agriculture, with feed and pastures for beef and lamb taking up the vast bulk of that land.

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The chart listed below programs that when the carbon sequestration “chance expense” (yellow bars) is included to the emissions of various food groups (teal bars), the carbon cost of lamb and goat meat really goes beyond that of beef, due to the large quantities of land required to graze those animals and their appetite for tree saplings.

Establishing the method will involve gathering information on agricultural efficiency, concern nature locations for preservation (such as existing peatlands) and highly polluted areas. It will also build on work such as Englands trees and peat action plans– released previously this year– in order to determine the land best matched for nature restoration..

As a result, the report states, the food system is being “asked to carry out a task of acrobatics” in providing sufficient land to produce the essential food, but likewise to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

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The chart below demonstrate how all land in the UK is assigned (left) and how much overseas land is utilized to produce food for the UK (ideal).

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has already indicated his hesitancy to support some of the policy recommendations laid out in the report. This does not bode well for the reports adoption, cautions Springmann:.

The UKs Climate Change Committee (CCC) has actually approximated that simply over 20% of farming land need to be rewilded or converted to bioenergy or other, non-agricultural crops in order to accomplish net-zero by 2050. The NFS report states:.