Are we running out of food?
Séan Rickard
Steve Macaulay
Is Britain running out of food? This seems an unlikely question, so I
put it to Séan Rickard who is an expert on food pricing and an
economist in this area.
Now, Séan, come on, this sounds almost ridiculous – the
supermarkets are heaving with food. The only thing I can see is that
food seems to be going up in price.
Séan Rickard
Well the United Kingdom is not running out of food, but the world is.
The demand for food is outstripping the world’s ability to supply food
and it is because of that fact, that trend, that world food prices are
rising. So the reason we see, in our supermarkets, the price of food
now rising much faster than the general rate of inflation – something
we have not seen in a generation in this country here – is due to the
fact that world markets are under pressure.
Steve Macaulay
Now, this is clearly serious; what are the implications for the UK?
Séan Rickard
The implications are that whereas if you go back for the last thirty,
forty years, we have enjoyed a situation where the price of food
always rose at a rate less than the general rate of inflation. Combine
that with people’s rising incomes and the affordability of food was
steadily improving; that is why it became a much smaller proportion
of people’s household expenditure and why we managed to spend
more money on other things, putting people to work in the rest of the
economy.
This situation has now been reversed. Food prices for the
foreseeable future will rise faster than the general rate of inflation.
We are at the moment struggling with incomes, so the affordability of
food has reversed. It is now getting less affordable – and of course
this is a basic necessity – and as the pressure bites, so governments in
rich countries will come under great pressure to do something about
it.
Steve Macaulay
And what is that something?
Séan Rickard
Well, again, we are going to have to rethink our approach to food
production. We have been in love with the organic school, the less
intensive school – to talk about industrialised farming was pejorative.
We are going to have to recognise that if we are going to meet the
world’s demands for food, we are going to need a new green
revolution and that new green revolution is going to involve larger
scale, industrialised farming and it is also going to involve the
application of science in much greater amounts than we have had
over recent years; and in particular we are going to need genetic
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Séan Rickard
modification in order to be allowed to produce the food we need, in
the light of the world running short of water, in the light of the world
seeing rising energy prices and with climate change putting greater
stress on crops.
Steve Macaulay
We are going to expect some resistance to that aren’t we?
Séan Rickard
Well perhaps people who have been well fed and have had the
luxury of very cheap food for a number of years, could believe that
they lived in a world in which they never had to worry about where
their food was coming from and what the cost of it was going to be.
Unfortunately, that world is now behind us and people are going to
have to think very seriously about the social and moral implications
of demanding that we adopt farming systems that produce less not
more food.
Steve Macaulay
Séan, there are some serious messages there. Thank you very
much.
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