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

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

The report, which is more than 150 pages long, sets out 14 recommendations for the UK government to consider, consisting of monetary incentives, reporting and trade requirements and targets for long-term change in the food system..

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

In this Q&A, Carbon Brief takes a look at the report and describes how its suggestions line up– or do not align– with the UKs climate targets and decarbonisation goals.

Last week, sequel of Englands National Food Technique (NFS) was released, supplying a broad overview of the state of the “food system”– an all-inclusive term that covers the production, processing, transport and consumption of food– in England..

The very first part of the strategy, published in July 2020, supplied suggestions for the federal government to attend to food insecurity and cravings in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The recently published second part has actually the mentioned goal of offering a “comprehensive strategy for changing the food system”..

What is the National Food Strategy?

Although the scope of the report covers England alone, it notes that the home nations “food systems are so tightly linked regarding be in locations inextricable”. It continues that it hopes the devolved governments “may in turn find some useful concepts” in the strategy.

Davey includes that, in his view, “every country worldwide would benefit from doing something of this kind”.

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

The reaction to last weeks release saw members of parliament, celebrity chefs and even rockstars weighing in on its significance.

Its aim was to offer a roadmap for changing the food system from its present state to one that is healthier for the planet and the population..

” [The report] brings everyone around the table for a dialogue about what kind of system do we have, what sort of system do we want to bring, what are the compromises and might federal governments do things in a different way.”.

The NFS has definitely brought these problems to the forefront, Edward Davey, the worldwide engagement director of the Food and Land Use Coalition, informs Carbon Brief. He discusses:.

The report itself calls the food system “both a wonder and a catastrophe”. While the current food system is capable of feeding the “most significant worldwide population in human history”, it states, this comes at a high ecological cost. The report notes:.

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

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

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

Why is the food method essential for dealing with climate change?

Other significant contributors to the emissions consist of transportation, fertiliser and food production and packaging..

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

Under its commitments to the Paris Agreement, the UK has actually vowed to lower emissions from 1990 levels by 68% by 2030. The government has actually also set a legally binding target to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Springmann says:.

” Without attending to the emissions of the food system, it will not be possible to meet those environment modification commitments [laid out by law] and to contribute to mitigating climate change.”.

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

” Theres rather a great deal of siloed thinking of the food system. From the point of view of integrated national policymaking that delivers, its great.”.

Virtually all of the gains made in the food sector have actually been due to cleaner energy and increased performance in the energy sector. Changes due to farming have been negligible– as seen by the big green bar in the chart below.

Attempting to create a much healthier population while farming in a less harmful way requires cooperation across disciplines, Davey tells Carbon Brief. He says:.

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

Almost half of all food-related emissions are because of agriculture, consisting of rearing animals. The methane produced by cows and other ruminants is “approximated to have actually triggered a 3rd of overall worldwide warming given that the industrial transformation”, the report notes.

What parts of the food method could make the biggest influence on environment change?

” The concern is how quickly will those reforms truly attend to the environment challenge … I believe the jurys out. Is it not as enthusiastic as it should be, from the viewpoint of what the land sector requires to do to attain the UK nationwide targets? I do not understand. Its definitely an action in the right instructions, however theres most likely an argument that its not enthusiastic enough.”.

The proposed framework uses the “3 compartment design”, which strives for a balance in 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 stimulate innovation to “create a much better food system”. Presenting mandatory reporting on a variety of metrics for food business utilizing more than 250 individuals. These metrics would include the tonnage of food waste generated.Creating a national food system information program, which would permit organizations and the federal government to examine their development on the goals laid out in the report.

A number of the recommendations made in the report relate in some method to climate change or ecological sustainability. These recommendations consist of:.

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

What are the limitations of the food technique in resolving climate modification?

For instance, the suggestion towards investing in innovation lists alternative proteins as a key location in need of research funding. Nevertheless, Springmann says, the alternative-protein industry is currently really strong. He informs Carbon Brief:.

” If you take the food system as a holistic thing, then you actually need to attend to all sort of problems. And if you wish to address effectively the ecological concerns, plus the health issues, you actually need to attend to the overconsumption of animal-sourced foods in our diets.”.

The food system “is extremely complicated”, Gill says, “but I do not think thats any reason for not in fact highlighting a few of those concerns right at the start”.

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

” There are currently plenty of meat replaces on the marketplace and much more so when you think about natural meat substitutes like more beans, lentils and those kinds of things … Explaining more plainly that healthy and sustainable diet doesnt always require to consist of processed meat alternatives would have been very important, but that was missed out on there and instead this sort of pro-business angle was taken.”.

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

Gill also notes that the report, while comprehensive, does not completely think about the unintended consequences of its recommendations. A much higher percentage of fresh fruits and vegetables is wasted than meat. The recommendations to eat less meat may increase the amount of food waste.

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

The recommendations “seem to be practically sort of looking backwards instead of looking forward”, Prof Maggie Gill of the University of Aberdeen, informs Carbon Brief. She adds:.

The commissioning of the report– it was led by business person and restaurateur Henry Dimbleby– means the report itself “shows a little bit of a skewed focus” towards business-focused options, Springmann says.

How does the food technique address the competing interests of agricultural land usage and land usage for carbon sequestration?

” Implementation of any of those suggestions really requires political will … The recommendations themselves might have been more progressive, however even the ones that are there do not seem to resonate quite with policymakers that are in power at the moment.”.

Lowering meat usage would likewise help relieve the strain on land resources, the report discovers. About 70% of the landmass of the UK is devoted to farming, with feed and pastures for beef and lamb taking up the vast majority of that land.

The chart listed below demonstrate how all land in the UK is allocated (left) and how much abroad land is used to produce food for the UK (best).

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

In order to resolve these contending interests, the report calls for a nationwide land-use strategy to finest assign land to nature, carbon sequestration and agriculture.

Developing the method will include gathering information on farming performance, concern nature locations for preservation (such as existing peatlands) and highly polluted locations. It will also build on work such as Englands trees and peat action strategies– released previously this year– in order to identify the land best matched for nature restoration..

The report itself calls the food system “both a disaster and a miracle”. The proposed structure utilizes the “3 compartment design”, which makes every effort 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 better food system”. These metrics would include the tonnage of food waste generated.Creating a nationwide food system information program, which would permit companies and the federal government to examine their development on the goals laid out in the report. The right-hand side of the chart, utilizing the same scale, shows how much land is used overseas to produce food for the UK. The teal bars show the direct emissions associated with the supply chain of each product, while the yellow bars reveal the carbon “chance expense”, implying the quantity of CO2 that might be sequestered in the land used to produce that food.

” The sort of land that might provide the best ecological benefits is typically not extremely agriculturally productive. The most productive 33% of English land produces around 60% of the total output of the land, while the bottom 33% only produces 15%.”.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has actually currently 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:.

” Globally, the biggest prospective carbon benefit of eating less meat would not in fact be the decrease in emissions, however the chance to repurpose land so that it sequesters carbon.”.

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As an outcome, the report states, the food system is being “asked to perform a task of acrobatics” in offering sufficient land to produce the required food, but likewise to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions.

The federal government has committed to producing a response to the strategy, consisting of propositions for brand-new legislation, within the next 6 months..

Nature-based options, such as peatland restoration and afforestation, are expected to play a major role in numerous countries and business net-zero targets, however many of these need the repurposing of agricultural land.

The right-hand side of the chart, using the very same scale, reveals how much land is used abroad to produce food for the UK. The combined land location for raising beef and lamb for UK usage is bigger than the UK itself. Source: The National Food Strategy, Part II.

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Total carbon expenses (kgCO2e) per kilogram of various foodstuff. The teal bars show the direct emissions associated with the supply chain of each product, while the yellow bars show the carbon “chance expense”, suggesting the quantity of CO2 that might be sequestered in the land utilized to produce that food. Source: The National Food Strategy, Part II.

The report keeps in mind that with the ideal incentives for farmers to repurpose their land, the technique might be mutually beneficial towards farmers and the environment. It states:.

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