Does Britain need a minister for food?

The first ship carrying 26,527 tonnes of corn has now left the Ukrainian port of Odesa on its way to deliver much needed grain to Lebanon.   

The Razoni is the first cargo ship to leave Ukraine since Russia invaded the country five months ago and blockaded its Black Sea ports. Getting safe passage for food shipments is a great achievement for the UN’s Antonio Gutteres and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For weeks now, the UN and Turkey have banged heads together to broker a truce which would allow cargo ships to leave their harbours to take grain to countries threatened by critical food shortages and hunger. 

As Guterres commented on the Razoni’s departure, making sure that “existing grain and foodstuffs can move to global markets is a humanitarian imperative.”

With luck, Ukrainian officials now hope the Razoni will be the first of 17 ships carrying around 600,000 tonnes of cargo, mainly grain and other foodstuffs, which will now also be able to leave the three main Black Sea ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi.

The ship’s safe passage through the naval mines – the Razoni is to be accompanied to Istanbul – should mean that much-needed grain supplies will now make it to countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa which depend on vital imports from Ukraine. 

The news had an immediate impact on wheat prices: the September wheat futures fell 2.4 per cent to $788.50 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Prices had already been dropping since news of the deal, with some Black Sea wheat prices in Asia falling below $400 a tonne, down $15 or more from a few weeks ago. 

If the shipments continue, this can only be positive news for food prices which have been soaring ever since the war started and Ukraine was unable to continue with its usual exports. 

As the war has shown so vividly, Ukraine is one of the richest breadbaskets in the world, and before the war was producing enough food exports to feed around 400 million people around the world – 12 per cent of wheat exports, some 16 per cent of corn and nearly 20 per cent of all barley as well as huge quantities of fertilisers such as potash. 

Following the safe passage truce, Ukraine now hopes to be able to shift 20 million tonnes of grain stored in silos, and another 40 million tonnes from this year’s harvest. 

Yet this may be only a temporary relief. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has warned that up to half of next year’s harvest is at risk because of the war, a disaster which would trigger another food crisis.  

Compounding the food shortages because of the Ukrainian war is the impact of severe drought throughout many areas of Europe – including the UK – and elsewhere in the world because of lack of rainfall. It’s another reason why food prices are rising so fast, further fuelling inflation.

Which is why whoever makes it to No 10 in September must put food security as one of their top priorities. As the Covid lockdown and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demonstrated, even the tiniest change in global supply chains can have the most disproportionate effect on even the most routine of life’s necessities. 

Tragically, the government has wasted over a decade in not dealing properly with either food or energy security. Yet it need not be so. We have plentiful supplies of energy and one of the best climates, landscapes and all the natural resources necessary for us to be close to self-sufficient in food stuffs.

While we are self-sufficient for about 60 per cent of most food stuffs – and 86 per cent for wheat – there are many specific areas which the agricultural industry could be focusing on to speed up and expand production. 

Food production is already a big industry: it underpins one of the UK’s biggest manufacturing sectors, the food and drinks industry. Employing about four million people, it’s worth about £120 billion per annum.

Yet as Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers’ Union, warned at the weekend: “To date, we’ve had absolutely no plan or commitment from the Government that Britain will carry on its role as a food-producing nation.”

What we have had, instead, she says, are “plans to take more farmland away from production, to plant trees and provide homes for beavers. We’ve had plans for how we will build housing on farmland in our Green Belt. We’re building solar farms at pace and farmers understandably opt for them in order to reduce their exposure to the economic risks of food production.” 

From the farmers’ point of view, she claims their role as “food producers is being made more difficult, rather than less. That food is viewed as just an unfortunate by-product of delivering for the environment. Our ancestors who have lived through food shortages would be turning in their graves.”

Whether it is Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak who is the new PM, they should have Batters for tea immediately. She has already written a letter to both of them calling for urgent action from the government to fulfil many of the promises made in its Food Strategy published in June, such as helping establish a more predictable regulatory environment, underwriting a statutory obligation to self-sufficiency and improving the immigration system to allow farmers to source seasonal labour and help with boosting exports. Maybe they should even consider having a minister whose sole brief is food…

Batters will also show them results of a report published last September, British Food Leading the Way, which highlights the vast opportunities open to the farming industry, and therefore for feeding the nation with quality but also cheaper produce.  

Much has already been done over the last few years to concentrate on certain sectors of food stuffs. According to Defra, since 2010 production of poultry meat and eggs has grown by 29 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, a rise which has met growing demand both inside and out of home. 

Strawberries are another stunning success: production is up over the last 12 years by nearly 50 per cent. By 2019, production hit a new record of 143,500 tonnes – more than 350 million 400g punnets of strawberries.

Barley is another rip-roaring success with production up by nearly 30 per cent over the last decade – but it could be expanded more. As well as the use of barley for brewing, it’s also essential for animal feeds but of course for malt, and Scotch whisky. 

The report also highlights the big opportunities for home-grown produce, particularly cheese and yoghurts, fruits like apples, pears and protein and whey crops.

One area where there is big scope for producing more – and where there is a huge appetite from consumers – is for cheeses and yoghurts. Over the last few years the UK had over a £1 billion trade deficit in cheese and around £250 million in yoghurts which is unnecessary considering the quality and range of British produce.

It’s a subject about which Truss has first-hand experience, after her infamous “cheese speech” given to the Tory party conference in 2014 which went viral, prompting much mocking with even her civil servants instituting a daily “cheese time.”

After rousing her audience with how the UK has never been stronger in food and drinks, selling Yorkshire Tea to China and producing wheat more competitively than Canada, she then turned on them, wide-eyed and glaring: “At the moment we import two-thirds of our apples. We import nine-tenths of all our pears. We import two-thirds of our cheese.” After a pause, she adds: “That. Is. A. Dis-grace.” Watching the video back, Truss still comes across a little mad. But it also shows just how prescient she was.