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

The first part of the technique, released in July 2020, offered recommendations for the government to address food insecurity and hunger in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The freshly published second part has the mentioned objective of offering a “extensive prepare for changing the food system”..

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

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

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

Recently, part two of Englands National Food Technique (NFS) was published, supplying a broad introduction of the state of the “food system”– an all-encompassing term that covers the production, processing, transportation and usage of food– in England..

The report, which is more than 150 pages long, sets out 14 recommendations for the UK government to think about, including monetary incentives, reporting and trade requirements and targets for long-lasting modification in the food system..

What is the National Food Strategy?

Some have criticised the recommendation to tax wholesale sugar and salt as unfair or as disproportionately affecting lower-income households. Others say that the measures 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 contributor to biodiversity loss, logging, dry spell, freshwater pollution and the collapse of marine wildlife. It is the second-biggest factor to climate modification, after the energy market.”.

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

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

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

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

Davey adds that, in his view, “every country in the world would gain from doing something of this kind”.

However, the NFS has actually definitely brought these problems to the leading edge, Edward Davey, the international engagement director of the Food and Land Use Coalition, informs Carbon Brief. He discusses:.

Although the scope of the report covers England alone, it notes that the house nations “food systems are so tightly interwoven as to remain in locations inextricable”. It continues that it hopes the devolved governments “may in turn find some helpful concepts” in the technique.

” [The report] brings everybody around the table for a dialogue about what sort of system do we have, what type of system do we want to bring, what are the compromises and might governments do things differently.”.

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

Why is the food strategy essential for taking on environment change?

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

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

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

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

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

Other major factors to the emissions include food, transport and fertiliser manufacturing and packaging..

Attempting to create a much healthier population while farming in a less destructive method needs collaboration across disciplines, Davey informs Carbon Brief. He says:.

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

” Theres quite a lot of siloed considering the food system. So, from the viewpoint of integrated nationwide policymaking that provides, its wonderful.”.

Under its dedications to the Paris Agreement, the UK has actually pledged to minimize emissions from 1990 levels by 68% by 2030. The government has likewise set a legally binding target to accomplish net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Springmann states:.

What parts of the food technique could make the greatest impact on environment modification?

Many of the suggestions made in the report relate in some way to environment modification or ecological sustainability. These suggestions include:.

” The question is how rapidly will those reforms actually deal with the environment challenge … I believe the jurys out. Is it not as ambitious as it should be, from the point of view of what the land sector needs to do to accomplish the UK nationwide targets? I do not know. Its certainly a step in the best direction, but theres probably an argument that its not enthusiastic enough.”.

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

The proposed framework uses the “3 compartment design”, which aims for a balance in 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 spur development to “produce a much better food system”. Presenting mandatory 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 information programme, which would enable organizations and the government to evaluate their development on the objectives laid out in the report.

What are the limitations of the food method in addressing environment modification?

For instance, the recommendation towards purchasing development lists alternative proteins as a key location in need of research study financing. However, Springmann says, the alternative-protein industry is already very well-developed. He tells Carbon Brief:.

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

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

The suggestions “seem to be nearly sort of looking backwards rather than looking forward”, Prof Maggie Gill of the University of Aberdeen, tells Carbon Brief. She adds:.

” If you take the food system as a holistic thing, then you actually need to deal with all type of issues. And if you desire to resolve appropriately the ecological issues, plus the health issues, you really have to attend to the overconsumption of animal-sourced foods in our diets.”.

The food system “is extremely complex”, Gill states, “however I do not think thats any excuse for not really highlighting a few of those concerns right at the start”.

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

” There are already lots of meat replaces on the marketplace and much more so when you think about natural meat replaces like more beans, lentils and those examples … Explaining more plainly that healthy and sustainable diet plan does not necessarily need to consist of processed meat options would have been crucial, however that was missed out on there and instead this sort of pro-business angle was taken.”.

Gill likewise notes that the report, while thorough, does not totally consider the unexpected effects of its recommendations. For example, a much higher percentage of fresh vegetables and fruits is wasted than meat. So the suggestions to consume less meat might increase the quantity of food waste.

” 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 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.”.

How does the food method address the contending interests of agricultural land use and land use for carbon sequestration?

” Globally, the greatest potential carbon benefit of consuming less meat would not really be the decrease in emissions, but the opportunity to repurpose land so that it sequesters carbon.”.

Establishing the strategy will include collecting data on agricultural performance, priority nature areas for conservation (such as existing peatlands) and extremely contaminated areas. It will likewise develop on work such as Englands trees and peat action plans– launched previously this year– in order to recognize the land finest matched for nature restoration..

The chart below programs that when the carbon sequestration “chance cost” (yellow bars) is added to the emissions of different food groups (teal bars), the carbon cost of lamb and goat meat in fact goes beyond that of beef, due to the big amounts of land needed to graze those animals and their cravings for tree saplings.

” Implementation of any of those recommendations really requires political will … The suggestions themselves might have been more progressive, but even the ones that are there dont appear to resonate quite with policymakers that are in power at the moment.”.

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

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Decreasing meat intake would likewise help ease the pressure 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 huge majority of that land.

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

The report itself calls the food system “both a miracle and a disaster”. 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 stimulate innovation to “develop a much better food system”. These metrics would include the tonnage of food waste generated.Creating a nationwide food system data programme, which would enable companies and the government to evaluate their development on the goals laid out in the report. The right-hand side of the chart, utilizing the exact same scale, shows how much land is utilized abroad to produce food for the UK. The teal bars indicate the direct emissions associated with the supply chain of each item, while the yellow bars show the carbon “opportunity expense”, suggesting the amount of CO2 that could be sequestered in the land utilized to produce that food.

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

The federal government has actually dedicated to producing a reaction to the strategy, consisting of proposals for brand-new legislation, within the next six months..

In order to address these completing interests, the report requires a nationwide land-use technique to finest designate land to nature, carbon sequestration and farming.

” The type of land that might deliver the greatest environmental benefits is frequently not extremely agriculturally productive. The most productive 33% of English land produces around 60% of the overall output of the land, while the bottom 33% only produces 15%.”.

As a result, the report says, the food system is being “asked to perform a task of balancings” in supplying sufficient land to produce the necessary food, but likewise to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions.

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

Nature-based services, such as peatland remediation and afforestation, are anticipated to play a major role in lots of countries and business net-zero targets, however a lot of these need the repurposing of farming land.

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

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