Labour and Tories go head-to-head over sustainable food policy

The government and the Conservative Party have today set out their competing visions for enhancing the UK's food security and improving the environmental sustainability of the agricultural sector at the annual Oxford Farming Conference.

Speaking at the conference, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn unveiled an updated version of the government's Food 2030 strategy and called on farmers to change the way they operate in order to increase productivity and limit their environmental impact.

"We know that the consequences of the way we produce and consume our food are unsustainable to our planet and to ourselves," he said. "There are challenges for everyone involved in the food system, from production right through to managing food waste."

Benn argued that there was the potential to deliver more sustainable food by simply promoting the benefits of local and environmentally friendly produce to consumers.

"People power can help bring about a revolution in the way food is produced and sold," he said, arguing that "food businesses, including supermarkets and food manufacturers, would follow consumer demand for food that is local, healthy and has been produced with a smaller environmental footprint – just as consumers have pushed the rapid expansion of Fairtrade products and free range eggs over the last decade."

He added that the rapid increase in demand for free range eggs from only 16 per cent of UK eggs a decade ago to just under 40 per cent now highlighted the extent to which consumer demand could drive changes in farming practices.

However, the new strategy document also includes proposals for a number of government initiatives designed to increase food production and curb emissions.

For example, it outlines plans for so-called "Meanwhile Leases" that would allow land owners to more easily lease land for use as allotments or community farming projects while they wait to develop a site.

"A supermarket, for example, may hold land for up to five years before they build on it," explained a spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). "We are looking at new forms of leases that would make it far easier for groups to do something with that land in the meantime, without all the legal ramifications they have to deal with currently."

She admitted that an increase in allotments was unlikely to have a huge impact on overall food security, but would deliver a wide range of health and environmental benefits by reconnecting people with where their food is produced.

The government is expected to launch more detailed proposals on how " Meanwhile Leases" will work in March, alongside plans for a national land bank that would serve to broker deals between land owners with fallow land and groups or businesses that would be interested in using the land for food production.

The strategy is also likely to prove controversial with environmental groups by stopping short of endorsing proposals from the Sustainable Development Commission for the UK to curb carbon-intensive meat and dairy production.

The strategy does signal support for consumer campaigns such as "meat-free Mondays", but argues that the carbon footprint of different types of livestock is "still unclear", adding that "not all types of meat have the same impacts, neither do all systems of production".

The government's argument was echoed by Emma Hockridge, policy manager of the Soil Association, who said that it was wrong to vilify all red meat as environmentally unsustainable. "Consumers are feeling increasingly confused by the proliferation of diet-related advice doled out by government departments [and] the debate about meat encapsulates this," she said. "Whilst it is right that we need to eat less meat overall to achieve sustainable food production, red meat, as long as it is from grass-fed livestock, has a critical role to play in minimising carbon emissions from farming. This is because grasslands for grazing represent vitally important carbon stores."

The spokeswoman for Defra said that while the government would encourage individuals to try and choose environmentally sustainable food it would not move to cut the size of the national herd in order to cut carbon emissions.

"We have set a target of cutting emissions from farming by three million tonnes a year, but the best way to do that is through better practices, such as improvements in feed stocks, technology and transport," she said, adding that the government was supporting such changes through a range of initiatives, such as its recently launched energy efficient loan scheme for farmers. "If we cut the size of the herd, the likelihood is we would simply end up importing more food that has not been produced in a sustainable manner."

National Farmers Union (NFU) president Peter Kendall welcomed the new strategy, arguing that it demonstrated that Defra "has grasped the complex issues that are in play when developing a joined-up food policy", although he added that the agricultural sector now needed to see more policies that " underpin and enhance a productive agriculture sector".

However, Jeanette Longfield, coordinator of green farming campaign group Sustain, accused the new strategy of being far too weak, claiming "the government’s ‘Food Vision” is hardly worthy of the name".

"The document proposes a series of minor tweaks to our fundamentally unsustainable food system and ignores obvious ideas to help British farmers, like improving the food that government itself buys," she said. "If government is serious about making our food system sustainable, it must put its money where its mouth is and only spend tax payers’ money on good quality and sustainable food. What we have got is more of the same policies that have caused the food system’s current problems."

Meanwhile, Conservative shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert is expected to tell the same conference that the government's policy of allowing consumer demand to drive food policy was fundamentally flawed and had allowed supermarkets to abuse their power to damage farmers' interests.

He will argue that the voluntary code of practice that currently governs the relationship between supermarkets and food suppliers is not "worth the paper it is written on" without tougher enforcement.

"It is not enough to talk loosely about a fair market or the need for better labelling," he will say. "We need action, with a supermarket ombudsman and legislation to enforce honest labelling if the retailers won't act."

The Competition Commission ruled in 2007 that the supermarket industry was operating in the public interest, but recommended that an independent ombudsmen was needed to ensure supermarkets do not use their purchasing power to exploit suppliers.

Herbert will argue that the failure to appoint such a figure would result in "reduced investment by suppliers, lower product quality and less product choice, with potentially higher prices in the long run".

Kendall welcomed the proposal, adding that the NFU would be keen to work with any government that moves to appoint an independent ombudsman. "The abuse of market power by retailers damages farmers' ability to innovate and invest which, in turn, leads to a reduction in choice and availability for consumers," he said. We have always said that an ombudsman would need to provide proactive and robust enforcement of the code of practice as well as protection of anonymity for suppliers to eliminate the climate of fear that currently exists."