It's 2024 and we live in in of the most developed countries in the world yet millions of people in the UK live in food poverty. This shouldn't be happening.
Sadly though, discussions about food poverty all to often get conflated with discussions about the cost of food. Prioritising "affordable" (read cheap & low quality) food is touted as the answer to this problem. In turn this then gets tied into discussions about "sustainable" farming systems and used as a reason to prioritise production at all costs. The thinking being, that more production means more food and lower cost food.
This is wrong. The reason that millions of people are faced with food poverty in the UK is because of deeply entrenched structural economic inequality. They don't earn enough to afford the food they need. It's not because food is too expensive, it's because people's incomes are too low. This is not a job for UK farmers to sort out, it's for governments and other institutions.
It's hard to see how food production in the UK can get any cheaper. As of 2023, over 60% of farms had a net income of less that £50,000 per year, with 10% making a loss all together. There is not a massive profit being made on food production. It may not seem like it, but the average UK household spends a comparatively tiny proportion of their income on food compared to almost every other country in the world.
Despite this, in my experience many farmers in the UK seem conditioned (absolutely not their fault) to think that their role is to single handedly feed the country at all costs. I've lost count of the number of times when a presentation on sustainable farming systems is countered by someone saying "Oh but you will never feed the country like that".
I was at a talk recently from a fantastic regenerative wheat brand, that was offering a substantial premium to farmers for their low input wheat. This was still greeted with outrage by some in the audience, due to the lower yields. These were the same people who had been bemoaning the low prices paid to them earlier in the day. This idea that the only way to solve food poverty is to ramp up production is deeply held.
The thing is, unsustainable food is only "cheap" because the price doesn't take into account the wider environmental impact (externalities) of production. If the price accounted for the impact on the climate, water and biodiversity, your "premium" regenerative produce would look very affordable.
This is not a distant fantasy though. The EU is working to bring in various carbon pricing mechanisms and across the world, the idea of true cost accounting is taking hold. Very soon we could see food prices linked to environmental impact. Imagine what the impact that would have on our farming systems?
My Oliver's Muesli ingredients are sourced from farmers who factor the environment into every decision they make and these externalities are accounted for. This can have a cost associated with it. I think it's a price worth paying though.