Brexit food.qxp_Layout 2 18/03/2020 10:09 Page 1
GARDENING FOOD & DRINK
Reap what you sow?
As the UK prepares to increase its self-sufficiency, Melissa Blease seeks advice from some of those who’ll face Brexit from the foodie frontline
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or decades, the shopping in our baskets and larders has represented the food-world equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Six Nations and the Academy Awards all sitting down together for supper – and our menus reflect the international theme. We blithely scoff strawberries in December, for example, largely imported from Spain, Egypt, Morocco and Israel. Nearly all the decent pasta that we eat is imported from Italy (if you’ve ever tried growing durum wheat in the UK, you’ll understand why). We dive into Icelandic cod on a regular basis, Norwegian salmon makes a splash on menus across the land, and tonnes of tuna makes its way across the oceans from Mauritius and the Seychelles. Even British salad leaves take a bruising in the colder months; the British Leafy Salads Association says that 90%of the salad leaves we eat in winter come from a single region of Spain. But with Brexit now underway, we can no longer take our food supply for granted. According to Chris Elliott – founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University, Belfast – the UK imports about 40% of all the food we eat, with around a third of it coming from EU member states. “The UK imported more than £370million worth of potatoes from the Netherlands and Belgium in the first six months of 2018 and, in the first nine months of last year, 94% of beef imports into the UK came from EU member states, three-quarters of it from Ireland alone,” he says. Meanwhile, according to a report commissioned by dairy giant Arla and published by the London School of Economics towards the end of last year, “the UK imports nearly all the yoghurt it eats, largely from mainland Europe,” while the Republic of Ireland produces nearly 10 billion litres of milk a year, the majority of which goes into the British market. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the future of food prices will remain “highly uncertain” until solid trade negotiations are made, and the British Retail Consortium has stated that the absence of a trade deal between the UK and the European Union could see the price of imported food rise by 22% over the coming year. In need of food for thought, we solicited some morsels of expert advice from a few of the West Country’s industry figures.
Given all the uncertainty, now is an excellent time to align our diets to incorporate more and more British seasonal food, looking forward to new produce becoming available as the seasons evolve rather than worrying about what we can’t get. Riverford already does this, so we’re a handy shortcut! Customers can select UK produce, and we even have a 100% UK veg box which makes it even easier. When we do import (which is always land/sea freight, never air freight), we do so from grower-partners with whom we have long-term and very solid relationships so we’re well protected against disruption to supply, and confident that we’ll be able to work around any potential obstacles to keep our organic boxes filled.
Ped Asgarian, MD of Chew Magna’s Community Farm
If managed properly, Brexit could be a big positive for UK farming. If mismanaged, it could possibly destroy what little soul is left of our longstanding agricultural heritage. Post-Brexit, the landscape of UK farming will undergo significant changes. Different variables will have a big impact on what we farm, how we farm, and the survival of farms, from smallscale to large. Many of these factors will be interwoven in ways that are not perhaps obvious to those without experience and knowledge of the history of how trade with Europe and how the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have influenced the crops we grow and how we grow them. We face a mixture of threats and opportunities, and we won’t know the full picture until the ink has dried on trade deals and we’ve decided how the CAP and countryside stewardship schemes will be replaced. Environmental land management schemes, for example – designed around the concept of public money for public goods – have been proposed as replacements for the current countryside stewardship schemes; they would encourage a significant move toward looking after soil, creating wildlife corridors and a raft of other positive changes that would benefit those aiming to grow agro-ecologically. However, such changes will only happen gradually due to farmers being locked in to current schemes for up to the next eight to 10 years, so this will slow down any positive environmental impact we could expect to see. If (hopefully) we choose to impose higher environmental and health standards on our farming practices, we will inevitably see prices rise. Making trade deals that allow cheaper food to enter this country and/or
...Now is an excellent time to align our diets to incorporate more British seasonal food... Vicki Mowat, Riverford Home Delivery
In the UK, we currently only supply 61%of our own food, while 70% of imported food comes from EU countries; the decisions made around tariffs, quality standards and other issues will potentially have a big impact on us all. At Riverford, we employ lots of brilliant workers from the EU, and the availability of future labour is a huge area of concern for the entire fruit and vegetable industry. We were very disappointed to see the government’s recent points-based immigration system announcement that seems to have completely ignored how vital migrant workers are to the agricultural sector. We’re providing full support to all of our European workers in order for them to be able to return next year to pick for us, and we’re also better able to attract British nationals as we pay above-average wages. We’re confident in being able to weather any storms and keep the Riverford veg boxes fully supplied, but we’re worried about the impact on growers who are smaller than us and less able to navigate this tricky issue. 46 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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APRIL 2020
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No 190
Building menus around seasonal availability supports local farmers and is better for the planet too
