Organic Food

I am always willing to learn, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. The 1970 Nobel prizewinner Norman Borlaug has reminded us that to produce all the manure required to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilisers we would require an additional 5 billion or 6 billion head of cattle, all emitting the greenhouse gas methane. Apart from extra grazing land, even more land would be required to grow the food for those cattle. How many forests would that destroy? An English botanist propagated Steiner’s teachings, which were also adopted by Lady Eve Balfour, a boutique farmer who was the wealthy niece of Prime Minister Balfour. From world war two through to the 1970s she was the leader of the British and European organic food movement, and she helped to found the Soil Association, which is the largest organic trade and certification group in the UK today. Prince Charles and Lord Melchett, the policy director of the Soil Association, have followed in those footsteps. Perhaps because of the influence of those people, the organic movement today is a powerful and popular movement. Whenever well-known people such as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who described organic food as a lifestyle choice in a speech to the Oxford farming conference in 2007, or Egon Ronay, have raised questions about the hype that surrounds claims for organic food, there has been an over-the-top reaction, mainly from the Soil Association, so I realise that today I am skating on very thin ice. Nevertheless, we need a healthy debate about organic food and the often spurious claims made by organic farmers.