To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that (1) food production is placed at the heart of wider government policies, and (2) domestic food production does not diminish.
Answered on
1 February 2023
Food supply is one of the UK's 13 Critical National Infrastructure sectors. Defra and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are joint Lead Government Departments (LGDs), with Defra leading on supply and the FSA on food safety. As such we work closely with the Cabinet Office and other LGDs ensuring food supply is fully incorporated as part of emergency preparedness, including consideration of dependencies on other sectors.
The Government Food Strategy was published in June 2022 setting out a plan to transform our food system to ensure it is fit for the future. The Food Strategy is a cross-departmental strategy. Therefore, Defra actively collaborated with and engaged with other Government departments in its development.
Responding to recent events, the Food Strategy puts food security at the heart of the government’s vision for the food sector. It included a commitment to broadly maintain the current level of food that we produce domestically and boost production in sectors where there are the biggest opportunities.
Setting this commitment demonstrates that we recognise the critical importance of domestic food production and the role that it plays in our food security. Domestic production figures have been very stable for most of this century. We produce 61% of all the food we need, and 74% of food which we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year, and these figures have changed little over the last 20 years.
Food production is the primary purpose of farming and always will be. Our agricultural reforms in England aim to support a highly productive food producing sector, meeting our commitment to broadly maintain food production, alongside environmental improvements that benefit us all such as improving water quality and species abundance.
Balancing and integrating food production with our environmental land management will support an efficient and sustainable land use without offshoring harms associated with lower production standards. We have a legal duty to assess the impact of all environmental land management schemes, such as Sustainable Farming Incentive and Landscape Recovery, on food production.