The Environment Sustainability and Food Supply challenge news insert was published with the support of The European Commission, The FAO, United Nations Environment Programme and DEFRA.

The editorial synopsis contains interviews with Achim Steiner (UNEP), George Kell (UNGC) Minoru Takada (UNDP) Greg Barrow (UNWFP) Erwin Northoff (UNFAO) Hillary Benn (DEFRA) John Beddington (BIS)

The briefing was inserted into and distributed by The Sunday Times on April 18th 2010.

The Sunday Times with its exceptional coverage and focus continues to dominate the market for the delivery of business leaders, decision makers, thinker’s opinion formers and legislators in The UK and across the globe as such provided the perfect home for this news insert.

Extending to 96 pages, in an A4 format and printed in full colour this insert played an essential part in meeting and exceeding Sunday Times readers’ goals with insight that fits into and supports the reader agenda.

It is often forgotten in our well-fed corner of the world that a year-round supply of affordable, health-giving food is the mainstay of social stability and our quality of life. This means forward thinking food policies are a categorical imperative for Europeans as they come to address the food supply challenge ahead. Simply put, we must produce more food to feed a growing population on the existing agricultural land base, while adapting to the impact of climate change, preserving biodiversity, reducing greenhouse gases, safeguarding the environment and staying within the narrowing limits of the public purse.

As the briefing discussed that’s some challenge, and not just for farmers and the food industry, but for European legislators and science. Failure to tackle the problem poses a real threat to ordinary people’s lives. That human society is based on agriculture herd farming and the sea and has been for some eight thousand years is a fact which urban dwellers, that is most of us, must be reminded. We can take comfort, however, that we have the technology and know-how to meet the challenge and produce the food: we just have to deploy it wisely and scientifically.

Food Security concerns is not an unfortunate condition of some distant land but a very European problem. Europe is the world’s largest producer of food, the biggest exporter of food and the biggest importer, and our imports exceed our exports by a very substantial margin. In other words, what Europe does with food counts, globally, and Europe will either be a big problem or part of the solution to the Food Supply challenge. This is not to suggest that Europe must feed the world, although as time goes by, the moral and ethical weight of this question will mount for those in relative abundance. The big challenge must be reckoned with right here in Europe for very Eurocentric reasons: the linked needs for affordable nutrition and social stability being chief amongst them.

As these challenges to food production unfold the population’s demand for food will increase. The FAO estimates that agricultural production will need to increase by 70% by 2050 to cope with a 40% increase in world population. This translates into an additional one billion tonnes of cereals to be produced annually by 2050.

The briefing discussed how doing all this will require a science-based governmental policy framework that enables farmers to meet the production challenge. This calls for consistently forward thinking food policies that are sadly lacking at the moment.

The EU, for example, supports the FAO’s call for increased productivity on one hand while on the other European governments are actively blocking the uptake of technologies that have the potential to increase productivity for reasons that are mainly ideological. At present, European policy is neither addressing the complexity of the issues nor the reality of present day industry, which is, emphatically, a science and not a transient expression of public opinion.

As the briefing explained what is very clear is that we can’t solve the agricultural problem by putting more land under the plough. The supply of agricultural land is severely limited and gone are the days when we would wish to cut down forests to grow food, whether here in Europe or anywhere else. Why not? Deforestation for food is agriculture’s biggest contributing factor to greenhouse gas emissions, actively releasing the gases and destroying on of the planet’s primary means of containing them. Forests and wild lands preserve biodiversity and maintain ecological balance. Forests, green belts, parklands and wilderness areas are both rightfully treasured and severely threatened in much of the world. This means that to meet the food supply challenge we will, by necessity, have to grow more food on the existing land base.

Given FAO and G7 warnings about the need to increase food productivity 70 per cent by 2050, it is reasonable to assert that food security will become the paramount societal and scientific issue for the foreseeable future. Understanding and addressing the complexity of increasing agricultural production is an urgent task for European policy makers with a caution that the biggest threat may not be not nature, but the ideological clutter that tends to obscure our vision… and what we need to clarify our vision on food supply is evidence, scientifically valid evidence.

In Brussels, on the way to the EU parliament, we pass by the EU’s current presentation of the issues. Unfortunately, it patently appeals to widespread public prejudice rather than providing constructive leadership toward rational conclusions.

The briefing discussed how presenting the choices in this way is very polarizing: organic versus conventional versus GMO’s... as if they were playing against each other in a cup final or boxing ring. In fact, it does no justice to the whole question of Food Security. Each mode has it place when the factors of productivity, nutrition, soil, climate, energy and markets are addressed in a rational scientific way. The fundamental question before us is how to increase food production without undue damage to our environment in order to provide a secure, steady, affordable supply of heath giving food. 
Actively reducing the productivity of European farms through regulations and incentive will have the inevitable consequence of expanding the farmland base driving up food prices and reducing the availability of good nutrition and somewhere more forests will be turned into food to fill the gap. That’s a pretty good description of a food crisis, which is something we want to avoid. The industry must to get together with legislators and policy makers on this issue. The industry is certainly prepared to offer all of its knowledge, innovative capacity and influence to the cause…. which is… in simple terms the sustainable increase of production. The way ahead will be best mapped by science which is why we should be heartened by the Barroso Commissions’s stated intention to appoint a chief science adviser to the EU. This is a very positive sign of serious intent on the question of Food Security.