Examination of Witnesses (Questions 523
- 539)
THURSDAY 7 MAY 2009
HILARY BENN
MP, PROFESSOR ROBERT
WATSON AND
MS SUSANNA
MAY
Q523 Chairman:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, to what, I think, will be
the concluding public evidence session in the Committee's inquiry
into food security. May we welcome the Secretary of State, Hilary
Benn, Susanna May, who is the Deputy Director, Food Security and
Prices Project, and Professor Robert Watson, who is the department's
Chief Scientist. You are very welcome indeed. Secretary of State,
I know you know everything there is to know about this subject,
because you have been on many public platforms, but the Committee
would certainly welcome the opportunity of hearing from your two
colleagues at moments you consider to be appropriate to perhaps
bring their own dimension to bear on the subjects that we are
going to discuss. Food security came to the fore in 2008 with
the rapid rise of certain commodity prices and the reaction in
certain countries, for example Argentina, who imposed export restrictions
on grain crops, and suddenly the world woke from a long period
of slumber on the subject of food and started to worry about food
security, and that has triggered, certainly on both a global,
European and national level, a great deal of activity and we certainly
welcome that. Could I start, Secretary of State, by asking you
one question? Keeping the nation fed is one of the most important
things that Defra has responsibility for, and so, when you are
thinking in those private moments about food security, what keeps
you awake at night?
Hilary Benn: Heavens. First of
all, can I say, Chairman, that I very much welcome this inquiry,
because I agree entirely with what you said in your opening remarks
about the events of last year having caused a lot of people to
say, "Hang on a minute: if this is what can happen when these
events come to pass, what is it, indeed, that we should be worried
about as we think about the future?", and I think it really
was a wake up call, and that is a phrase that I have used. What
worries me is how we are going to feed the growing population
of the world—another two and a half to three billion people
in the next 40 to 50 years—and how we are going to do that
in a sustainable way, given that we know that the climate is changing
and water will be in scarce supply in some parts of the world.
We know that natural resources, particularly oil, will eventually
diminish, and given that, I think, Mark Twain said, "Buy
land because they've stopped making it", we have got a finite
quantity of land with which to do that. We have to make sure that
the system is resilient to the shocks and crises that may come
our way, and we saw some examples of that with the rise in prices,
the food riots and the export bans last year. Is food available?
It is one thing to have enough food. We do wrestle in the world
with the fact that we have got about a billion human beings who
are overweight in some respect and a billion people who go to
bed hungry every night, so we have got an inequitable distribution
of the food that we have got, and from my days as the International
Development Secretary, in countries where people were going really
short of food, there was enough in the country, but it was not
available either because it physically was not where they could
get to it or they did not have the money, the means, to buy it,
and so affordability is, I think, a really important part of it.
In the UK at the moment we are food secure, but I think there
are some big challenges as we look towards the future. Fundamentally
it is about making sure that people have enough to eat.
Q524 Chairman:
I was intrigued. On your department's website, from my looking,
there is not a page that says, "Food security". To find
your comments on food security you have to go to the page that
is headed, "Food and drink", and it does worry me a
little bit that you have attached a lot of priority in what you
have said to the importance of the subject but there is not actually
a specific bit on the very comprehensive Defra website that actually
deals with what you are doing on food security. The boundaries
of this inquiry to a degree were established by the FAO[8]
at their Rome Food Summit last year. Gladly, I attended, but I
could not find anybody from Defra. There may have been somebody
there under cover, but I could not find any representative there,
which concerned me a little bit, because there were two targets
that emerged: an increase of food production by 50% by 2030 and
the doubling of the world food supply by 2050. Nobody at the time
demurred that those were not sensible projections. How does Defra
see those targets? Does it recognise them, does it think they
are valid and are they guiding the work that you have now initiated?
Hilary Benn: On the website, I
am pretty sure the next time you look, and I do not know how long
it will take us to do it, but if you do not mind me not waiting
for recommendations to come out from the Committee in its report,
we will get on and do something about this, because there is quite
a lot of stuff that we have produced already that we can, I am
sure, usefully put together in that place. Secondly, as you know,
Douglas Alexander represented the UK Government at that particular
conference. On the targets, they have, indeed, become the accepted
figures that everybody repeats, although since we are talking
about a population increase of potentially 50% and talking about
a doubling of the food production, the aim of the target is to
ensure that those who do not have so much to eat at the moment
have more food to eat; so it is more than just keeping pace with
the current distribution of food and who has access to it. I think
it is also worth observing that the United Nations Environment
Programme has produced some estimates that say, if you could halve
the losses post harvest in distribution, because we know in parts
of the world a lot of food rots before it gets anywhere near anybody,
either because it cannot be stored properly or there are difficulties
in transport, you could feed maybe another two billion people
at current levels of nutrition. I suppose the Foresight Study
which John Beddington is leading, which is one of the steps that
we have taken in the light of what happened last year, and the
really big focus there is on this work, which will help to answer
that question. In the end a target is something that you aim for,
and I think it acts as encouragement and an incentive. What is
not in doubt is that the world is going to have to produce quite
a lot more food.
Q525 Chairman:
To be specific, the question that I asked was: does Defra recognise
those two targets, if you like, as valid benchmarks against which
to judge what the United Kingdom, the European Union and others
do as they set out on the road to deal with the agricultural challenge
that is implicit in those targets?
Hilary Benn: The international
community, through those bodies, has set those targets. I answered
the question by saying that they make certain assumptions, and
also pointing out that there are other things that you could do
to help to deal with the problem that would not on its own result
in those kind of increases in production, and it is that target
we are working for. I do not think anyone is going to mathematically
sit down and say we did not get to 50%; we only ended up at 48%.
The fact is we need to get our skates on, we need to make progress,
and they are a guide to what it is we are seeking to do, but I
do not think we should get hung up on the precise figures.
Q526 Chairman:
Given the implications of those targets, and your department takes
the lead in the UK on food, would you describe to the Committee
what Defra's role is in actually responding to the challenge of
global food security as implied by those targets?
Hilary Benn: First of all, it
is not just a job for Defra.
Q527 Chairman:
But you hold the ring within government on food.
Hilary Benn: That is correct,
but when it comes to the contribution that we make to help other
countries to grow more food, obviously the lead responsibility
rests with Douglas Alexander and the Department for International
Development. You will have seen last year, Chairman, the increased
funding that we put in, as the UK, to deal with the immediate
crisis, which is more money for the World Food Programme to ensure
that people have enough to eat. There is a considerable investment
we are making in international agricultural research, including
through the CGIAR Programme (Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research). It is really a network of research centres.
I do not know whether it began when I was at International Development,
but, anyway, we are putting in a considerable amount of money.
We are supporting the Global Partnership, the UK, which aims to
match plans within country for improving agriculture and production
with sources of funding. It is not a new funding stream, but it
is trying to tap into bilateral funding from individual donors,
money that is coming from the World Bank. I think the truth is
that the world took its eye off agriculture, including development.
I think there is no doubt about that. Some developing country
governments took their eye off it, some of the international institutions
took their eye off it, but that has begun to change, and, of course,
there is the Framework for Action that was agreed jointly by the
UN and the World Bank which is looking both at how you feed people
who are short of food now and how you can grow more in the future.
So that is, if you like, on the international side. It is pretty
clear to me that within individual countries there is a range
of things that need to happen. Farmers, first of all, need to
feel secure on the land, because if you do not feel secure on
the land do you have the incentive to invest in improving it?
Secondly, you need better seeds; you need fertiliser you can afford.
I remember visiting a group of farmers in northern Ethiopia some
years back who told me, and it stuck in my mind, that a 100 kilogramme
bag of fertiliser would cost the average family in that village
half their annual income, and part of the reason was the huge
expense of getting it there. Hence my point about transport, better
storage, access to credit: because if you are going to buy fertiliser,
or improve irrigation or better means of tilling the soil, you
need money, you need a market, because in the end, as least year's
record wheat harvest in the UK showed, if there is a price incentive,
then you bring forth a lot of extra production. Part of the problem
that some developing countries face is the lack of markets, and
we make it difficult by dumping surplus produce, which is why
progress on Doha is so important, and the agricultural revolution
we saw particularly in parts of south-east Asia has not really
got to Africa. As I think Douglas Alexander has talked about,
25 years ago the world came together and said we need to help
to feed Africa. Africa is going to play a really important part
in the next 25 years in feeding itself and actually helping to
feed some other countries as well. That is on the international
side; I could move to the UK if you would like me to do so.
Chairman: I think we are going to explore
that in more detail. I am going to pass the questioning to Anne
McIntosh.
Q528 Miss McIntosh:
Does it worry you that your definition of food security, Secretary
of State, is different to the World Trade Organisation's definition
of food security?
Hilary Benn: It does not cause
me to lie awake at night, no.
Q529 Miss McIntosh:
Is it the case that we have gone from a position of being a net
exporter of food to, now, a net importer of food? When you say
that we are food secure, is that not a fact?
Hilary Benn: In terms of self-sufficiency,
as you will know, we are more self-sufficient now in the UK at
about 60% overall, 73% of the food that can actually be grown
in the UK, than we were in the 1930s and the 1950s, and it is
quite interesting, if you do go back, to look at the degree of
self-sufficiency. Clearly, during the Second World War the position
was rather different, because our food supplies from other countries
were greatly threatened by the U-boats. So we are in a better
position than we were in the past and, of course, we export food
as well, and that is very important to the farming and the food
production industry.
Q530 Miss McIntosh:
What is the status of your Food Matters report? The vision
and strategy for food, which we were tasked with delivering in
the Food Matters report, is it a plan for agriculture and
the food industry in the UK up to 2050? Is that still the case?
Hilary Benn: We are making a lot
of progress on implementing the recommendations that are in the
Food Matters report. Just to give some very practical examples,
the voluntary scheme on calorie labelling in restaurants and cafes
will start in June. The pilot of the healthier food mark, which
is in the public sector, particularly central government, the
NHS and the Prison Service, will begin in July. We will talk about
this, I am sure, more later, but we have pulled together all of
the funders who are interested in agricultural research in the
UK to ask the question: what are we all doing? Are there gaps?
How do we fill them? The Foresight Study I have mentioned. The
first meeting of the High Level Group we are hosting at Defra,
we are co-chairing this with DFID, later on this month and, of
course, we will be publishing both our vision and our plan on
what are we trying to do and how are we going to get there in
the autumn. Around the same time, we have not quite decided yet,
we will be publishing the results of the assessment of food security
that we have done because, having highlighted the issues in the
consultation paper we published initially, I reflected on what
was happening in 2008 and said we need to really start to think
about this. We are doing a very detailed piece of work looking
at all of the potential threats to food security here in the UK,
understanding their nature and what we can do about them. It is
work in progress and I think it is going to be a very comprehensive
piece of work. I am not aware of any other country that is doing
something on the same scale, and we probably have not done it
in the UK in the same way since, no doubt, we had to do so in
the Second World War.
Q531 Chairman:
Does that cover all aspects of the food supply chain?
Hilary Benn: Yes, it does, from
what might happen in terms of climate, of shocks that might occur,
if you have trouble with fuel supply, what happens if ports cannot
operate for some reason, because some ports have specialist facilities
for inputting certain types of product. A lot of the soya bean
comes into Liverpool, as I recollect, and a lot of bananas come
into a port on the south coast. I cannot remember if it is Southampton
or Portsmouth. So it is trying to look at all of the different
risk factors which might impinge upon our food security.
Q532 Miss McIntosh:
The Government has a glittering array of chief scientific advisers.
We had one scientific adviser that said climate change was the
biggest challenge that the country faces; another scientific adviser
has told us that food security is the greatest challenge. There
is one area that is affected by both food security and climate
change, and that is where we do have inundations. We saw the scale
of the summer floods 2007, where farmers lost huge tracts of land
and their produce, which of course was not insured for the most
part, and, obviously, we lost our potential food supplies: peas,
cabbage, grain and potatoes, in particular. How do you reconcile
these different challenges? Is the department minded to look at
the outcome measures, particularly to make sure that farmers will
be compensated for this in the future?
Hilary Benn: I would say in answer
to your first question, Miss McIntosh, the truth is they are both
big challenges, because climate change impacts upon our ability,
potentially, to grow enough food for the world. So it is not a
competition between the two; they both matter hugely. On agricultural
land, as a society we have a choice to make about how much money
we invest in flood defence and, as you know, because you follow
these matters very closely, the investment is going up. How do
we prioritise where the schemes are going to be put in, where
we can protect property? How do you value residential homes, how
do you value businesses, commercial as against agricultural businesses?
And there are cost-benefit analyses that have to be done. In the
end you can change the formula for distributing the money if you
want to, you can come up with any formula that you like to do
that, it is the amount of money that we are putting in, but also
recognising that, in some cases, in some places, while our policy
is to do our darndest to defend as much as possible, depending
on what happens to sea level rise (and that depends what happens
to the climate) we may find it difficult to protect everywhere,
and that is a serious issue for food: because if (and it is not
unique to Britain) agricultural land started to disappear under
the waves around the world, by definition we have got less land
on which to grow a greater amount of food, which will put an even
greater onus on trying to get productivity on the land up, which
is going to be a very big task both for research and for farming
practice.
Professor Watson: Just to show
how we are connected, as you know, as you have just said, there
are several CSAs, and under John Beddington's leadership we actually
started off saying there were three main issues that we needed
to work across government as CSAs, one was climate change, one
was counter-terrorism and one was pandemic flu. We then added
a fourth, which was food security, and we embedded it in the climate
change group. So we actually recognise climate change is a separate
issue from food security and vice versa, but they are intimately
coupled, and, as John and I would both say, we have to look at
the nexus between food, water and energy security and its relationship
to climate change and other issues such as ecosystem services.
So, absolutely, they are one of the same issue and we recognise
that. Climate change is one of the key threats and, as was pointed
out right at the beginning by Michael Jack, the challenge is not
only doubling the production of food over the next 50 years, it
is how do we do it in an environmentally and socially sustainable
manner? The International Assessment on Agriculture that I directed
recognised that we were increasing our food production and it
was coming at the major expense of destroying many other ecological
systems, and so we have to look at the question of, not how you
double it, but how do you double it and make it socially and environmentally
sustainable, and one of the big threats is climate change; not
the only one, but one of the big ones.
Q533 Miss McIntosh:
How do you reconcile the inevitable short-term political cycle
with the long-term vision that you would like to set out for delivering
a UK food system?
Hilary Benn: Heavens. I think
by being straightforward and honest about the nature of the challenge
that we are faced with, because, frankly, whoever is in government
anywhere in the world, this is going to be a really important
issue that they are going to have to deal with. To tell the truth
about this, it covers a whole host of things, and actually the
evidence sessions that you have been undertaking, if I may say
so, and the fact that we are genuinely looking forward to what
you have to say in your report, is part of the conversation between
us about what is the right thing to do: because it is not immediately
obvious that you look and say, "Right, if you just press
those three buttons, we have got the problem sorted for the next
50 years". It is much more complex than that. The question,
I suppose for each of us, because everybody has to play their
part, it is not just a job for government, is what is the contribution
that we can make? What is the thing that we can influence? How
can we get the incentives right? How can we build the understanding?
How can we get people to change the way in which they do things?
We cannot do this by direction alone, both because we have a much
more diversified system now and partly because you do need change
from the bottom up. If you take a really practical example of
farmers and the way in which they apply fertiliser, we know that
you can be more selective if you have information about what is
the nitrogen content of the soil already, and having talked to
farmers who are using that practise, analysing the soil, using
high-tech equipment, GPS, to then go round and put the right amount
of fertiliser on the right bit of the field. There is a really
practical example of how you can reduce the imports; it has a
benefit in terms of climate change; it means it is less costly
for the farmer because fertiliser costs a fortune now. So we need
a combination of leadership from the top, the right kind of advice,
the right science and also the choices that we make as individuals
about what it is that we eat, because the demand comes from people.
Q534 Chairman:
May I pull you back to the question that Anne asked. If we look
at the organisational, the institutional framework, politicians
come and go on a four to five yearly cycle, but some of the work
that is going to have to be done will have to be long-term and
continuing. We are going to have a session and some questions
on the science base, but what I want to know is, if we are going
to put in train (and that is what the question asking) programmes,
policies and approaches which recognise the break-point of 2030
and 2050 and do all we have to do meet those targets, what are
you going to put in train that will be of a lasting nature which
is almost outwith the cyclical nature of politics but where the
work has to carry on?
Hilary Benn: All I can do for
the period that I have got responsibility for this is to take
the right decisions and put in place the work that I think is
going to start the process of dealing with this. It is for others
who come afterwards to take it forward. The more that we can build
a consensus, frankly, about what needs to be done, the better
chance the ebb and flow of the political cycle will not get in
the way of carrying on with it afterwards, would be my answer.
Professor Watson: I think what
we have to recognise, and we could ask ourselves the question,
is "What was the cause?", and it was implied in your
opening remarks about the food price increases. It is really about
six factors. It was very poor harvests, especially in the US and
in Australia; it was the use of food crops for biofuels, especially
maize in the US, where one-third of last year's crop was used
for biofuels; it was the energy price which caused the high cost
of fertilisers and the costs of mechanisation; it was the increased
demand and the type of demand for China for more meat, export
bans and speculation. What we have to realise is things go on
and off the boil. These are issues that will stay with us for
decades, so it is our climate change policies, our energy policies;
it is to do with the use of biofuels; it is how do we do trade,
as Hilary has already said. What we have got to recognise is that
because the food price has come down in many parts of the world,
it does not mean to say the problem has gone away. Part of it
is energy—oil prices have come down drastically—the
economic slow down. So we have got to recognise these are long-term
issues. They cut right across sectors—it is not just Defra,
it is DECC, it is the international organisations like the World
Bank—and, as has been already pointed out, a few years ago
the issue that was food prices were so low that farmers were going
out of business because they could not make a profit. So we have
a twin challenge: how do we make food affordable for the poor
and everybody and, at the same time, a profit for the farmer?
I think these are the twin challenges we have to keep our eye
on.
Q535 Miss McIntosh:
What working relationship have you established with the devolved
administrations to ensure that the Food Strategy is coherent across
the whole of the United Kingdom?
Hilary Benn: Food policy is, as
you know very well, a devolved matter, but we are working with
the devolved administrations both on the food security assessment,
because that is looking at the UK as a whole; we are also working
with them on what will be our shared view of what a sustainable
and secure food system is going to look like. That is the first
thing. Secondly, the Council of Food Policy Advisers, which you
know I have established, is going to be holding a joint session
with the devolved administrations in November to take their mind.
Obviously we work closely together on matters European, as they
affect what we are discussing here today. There is, in fact, going
to be a ministerial meeting in Edinburgh on 11 May, which Jane
Kennedy is going to, where the ministers are going to come together
to talk about this. So one has to respect the devolution settlement,
but in the end, of course, we have a shared interest in doing
this.
Q536 David Taylor:
Secretary of State, you probably recognise this quote. For the
avoidance of doubt, "No ifs, no buts, I want British agriculture
to produce as much food as possible", which is what you said
at the Oxford Farming Conference. Others have observed that that,
in a sense, is a political slogan, a statement of priority, but
it is rather incoherent as far as being an actual detailed plan,
bearing in mind the problems, as you have referred to them in
your earlier remarks, in pulling together the agri-business and
the big five supermarkets, including the Co-Op I am now pleased
to say, to take the necessary steps to encourage farmers and growers
to plan. What do you feel does need to be done to flesh out that
particular statement you made back in January?
Hilary Benn: I said that, in part,
because there was some debate about whether there was a conflict
between production and sustainability. People would sometimes
say to me, "Why do you keep going on about the environment
and sustainability? It is about production, surely." To which
my answer is that it is not a competition; you are going to have
to do the two together. That is the first point. Secondly, what
is going to determine the level of production? I noted with interest
that when Peter Kendall came before you, he did say that it is
not about setting targets for production, because I know there
has been some debate. Very few people have said, "Let us
go for self-sufficiency", some have said we should have targets.
To be honest, I do not know for the life of me how you would set
a target for potato production in the UK, and what the policy
would be if you did not meet the target I do not quite understand
either. Clearly price acts as a very powerful incentive to production,
and we saw that with the wheat prices last year. I think, secondly,
there is more we could do on productivity. We have not talked
a lot about that. By and large British agriculture is pretty productive
compared to some other systems in the world, but there are still
gaps between the most productive and the less productive and,
therefore, what can be done to spread good practice to try and
raise the overall standard—
Q537 David Taylor:
Can I interrupt briefly and return to the core of this. How do
you get, in a very competitive market, agri-business and the big
farm retailers and others to work together in a way which will
provide the necessary price signals and messages so that farmers
and growers will adjust accordingly?
Hilary Benn: The third point I
was going to come on to, which seems to me to be a fundamental
part of this, is what we as consumers choose to buy. One signal
which the supermarkets and the food companies pay very, very close
attention to is what customers want. If people say, "I would
like to buy UK produce. I am interested in where the meat comes
from", or apples, or cheese, that is a powerful way of supporting
the industry, and I think there is a growing interest, with farmers
markets and lots of other things that are happening, in where
food comes from and consumers are in a very powerful position
to help answer the question: how can British agriculture produce
more? I think we have to think about regulation, because the regulation
has got to be smart. If I take two examples of things that I have
been fighting in Europe on recently, one was the pesticides regulation
where we did the assessment, in the end we thought it was, frankly,
over the top and could have a potential impact, depending on what
substances are ruled in or out when they finally come to do that:
the triazoles in particular which help to deal with septoria in
wheat—very important for controlling that particular fungus,
I think it is—and the second example would be electronic
identification of sheep, where we have been hard at work. There
is a slightly greater awareness now in Europe of the practical
implications of that, and we have had some success in mitigating
the way in which that is going to be implemented. Lastly on my
list, I would say skills. Going back to the point I was making
earlier, before you rightly called me to order, Chairman, what
farmers do on the ground, making sure that we have the skills
to grow more food sustainably, is really important, and that is
why I recently called together all of those who have an interest
in skills for a "round table" at the Royal Agricultural
College in Cirencester, and the Agri-Skills Forum, which is the
industry lead on this, is going to come back to me and say, "Here
is our plan", because I think the industry has to take a
lead, the Government then has to look at what part it plays.
Q538 David Taylor:
You say the strongest signal for retailers, of course, is consumer
preference, and marketing is partly shaping consumer desires and
partly responding to them, but should not labelling be in there
somewhere, because that is a chronic problem that has been raised
with this Committee in the eight or nine years that it has been
in existence whenever we have talked to the NFU[9]
and others. What more are we doing on that, briefly?
Hilary Benn: I agree with you
completely. We are pressing in Europe, in the changes that Europe
is considering, for better labelling to give that information
to consumers. It is very striking, if you take the pig industry,
that they have had a difficult time. Their central argument has
been not to come to Government to say, "Can you sort things
out?" We set up the Pig Taskforce, which was a recommendation
from this Committee, and we have got on and done it, and Jane
is chairing it. They said to consumers, "Look, if you want
to be able to continue to buy pork and bacon from British producers,
buy our product", and I thought that was a very effective
way of trying to deal with it, because I think it is right that
people should be able to know where stuff comes from and then
they can make a choice as to what they buy. It is a very practical
way of supporting production in the UK.
Q539 David Taylor:
A final question from me. It relates to incentivisation. You quoted
Peter Kendall earlier on. At another point he pointed out that
farmers will respond quite frequently and effectively to tax incentives
when looking at trying to encourage them to expand capacity, but
at this very time the agricultural funding allowances have been
removed. That seems to be sending a bit of a mixed message, would
you not say?
Hilary Benn: That is a step which
the Government has taken in order to try and simplify the system.
We are in the process of talking to HMRC[10]
about the definition of plant and machinery, because there is
a continuum—I see you smiling, Chairman—between just
a physical building and plant and machinery that is part of a
building, which is part of an agricultural process, bluntly, to
try and get the most flexible and reasonable interpretation of
that. Some farmers will be able to take advantage of the further
changes relating to investment you can set against tax that were
announced in the budget by the Chancellor, but I know it is an
issue which the NFU has been vigorously campaigning on.
8 Food and Agricultural Organization at the United
Nations Back
9
National Farmers' Union Back
10
Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Back
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