Further memorandum submitted by Dave Stanley
(RAS 13)
With regard to the CapVision there are a number
of critical issues relating to agriculture that are currently
being ignored or denied. These include:
1. Can deliver positive environmental
impacts. Only land management (including agriculture) is capable
of delivering POSITIVE environmental impacts. Almost all other
economic activities only deliver NEGATIVE environmental impacts.
This fundamental consideration that should direct all Government
policy relating to sustainability. To appreciate this fact, agreement
to, and a basic understanding of, environmental impacts and how
they occur is, in my view essential to identifying potential sustainable
solutions.
2. Decreasing efficiency of food production.
Contrary to popular belief the increase in monocropping, intensive
rearing of stock, centralised distribution systems, supermarkets,
prepared meals etc. is resulting in a continuing decline in the
efficiency of food production in the UK. An ever increasing amount
of energy is being required to deliver a calorie of food to the
consumer. Rising oil prices and forecast decline in oil production
will result in a progressive escalation of food costs unless action
is taken to deliver real efficiency gains measured by resource
use, rather than direct economic costs to the producers.
3. Soil degradation and loss of fertility.
Current intensive agricultural practices are dependent upon the
abuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. These practices
are resulting in a rapid decline in soil fertility evidenced by
the huge decline in soil organic matter (increased flooding, reduced
drought resistance) and decline in trace element levels. This
is resulting in a decline in essential trace elements, has a direct
impact on plant, animal and human health (mental and physical),
and is a real threat to future food production.
4. Food security. With a rising world
population, increasing desertification, declining water resources,
increasing demand for food production (China & India) coupled
with increasing vagaries of Climate Change—relying increasingly
on imported food as a vision for the future has, in reality, the
hallmark of a nightmare.
5. Sustainable Food. The move towards
a truly efficient sustainable food production system offers nothing
but benefits to the UK. One benefit would be to deliver around
27% reduction in Greenhouse gas emissions and achieve the UK's
Kyoto targets.
Finally as a coarse indicator of the lack of
balance and failure to address the real threats to agriculture
that the CapVision ought to have addressed I might flag up that
a word search of "CapVision"—a sustainable model
for European Agriculture—gives the following hits:
— Climate Change ("I mean a
challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its
destructive power, that it alters radically human existence."
Prime Minister September 2004) = 1 mention
— Soil (subject to increasing erosion,
degradation, sealing) = 1 mention
— Energy (solar, renewable, fossil
fuels—all critical to farming) = 1 mention
— Organic Farming (more sustainable
option and Government SDI) = no mention
— Sustain (variants) = 23
June 2006
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