OPINION: Our national larder is too bare
It’s that time of year when most farmers could happily deploy twice as many tractors and staff.
The rush of harvest and the start of the next farming year leaves you struggling to remember what day of the week it Is. Nonetheless, despite the hectic whirl, please don’t forget 30 August is the feast day of St Pammaticus, or such notable occasions as Male Grooming Day and International Contraception Awareness Week
But all this is nothing particularly novel because, if you look at the calendar, hardly a day goes by where someone somewhere hasn’t decreed it a special day for commemorating some person or event or concept or condition. My favourite is 4 May, which is officially International Lisping Star Wars Day as in “May the fourth be with you”.
In among all this frippery, the NFU has come up with a worthwhile idea for a new awareness day in mid August – this year 14 August was Food Self-Sufficiency Day or to put it a long-winded way “We’ve run out of home-produced food today”.
The point is that as the UK, according to DEFRA figures, is only 61% self-sufficient in its food needs, then 14 August is the day of the year when our home-produced supply runs out.
From mid-August onwards we have 139 days being entirely dependent on food imports. By way of comparison the Germans, who are 93% self-sufficient in food needs, would celebrate their equivalent day more than three months later in late November.
Naturally, the French would never celebrate such a day given that they produce more than they consume. Given every other day is some sort of national holiday in France, it is probably just as well they don’t have yet another excuse for a day off.
By way of historical comparison, in the early 1980s the UK would have celebrated national Run Out of Home-Produced Food Day in late September. In other words, 30 years ago we carried 40 days more food supply in the national larder than we do today.
Our level of self-sufficiency in food is a contentious issue. For some, it’s no more important than whether we are self-sufficient in clothes or shoes manufacture. The fact is we are overwhelmingly dependant on imports for a multitude of everyday things, including shoes and clothes. So why should food be any different?
Possibly there are two good reasons why food should not just be shoved in with a host of other consumer purchases.
Just like energy, food is politically sensitive, as the spark behind last year’s Arab Spring illustrates only too well. Most countries of the world recognise that it is foolhardy to become over-dependant on others for food or energy supplies and they put in place policies to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The current US administration’s determination to get away from a dependency on Middle Eastern oil being a case in point. The second reason is to do with the CAP. The central purpose of the CAP is to ensure a stable and safe food supply for the EU population.
All governments within the EU who pay into the CAP should try to make sure that their home agricultures play a full part in its objectives. If British agricultural production is diminishing at a greater rate than elsewhere in the EU then our politicians really need to ask why.
If one of the reasons is because of the way they are implementing that policy then they need to ask at every step: “What will be the consequences for our national food production?”
Guy Smith comes from a mixed family farm on the north-east Essex coast. The farm is officially recognised as the driest spot in the British Isles. Situated on the coast close to Clacton-on-Sea, the business is well diversified with a golf course, shop, fishing lakes and airstrip.
Guy Smith on his love-hate relationship with the start of harvest