Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I declare a range of interests, current and historic, which, if events in this place develop the way they appear to be developing, may eventually exclude me from contributing on the only subject I know anything about—food. I am a director of two family farm businesses, a trustee of the Lawes Agricultural Trust and was for many years the chairman of a company called Northern Foods. I am also hoping to locate five wind turbines on my family farm. The Queen’s Speech will make a number of useful contributions to mitigating the causes of climate change. However, I would like to highlight two fundamental nettles which must be grasped if Governments, both nationally and globally, want to make a real difference, and they both relate to food. It means taking on two powerful, opposing, warring pressure groups which, from their different perspectives, deny the science. On the one hand, there are some green pressure groups which oppose scientific research for irrational evangelical reasons; and on the other, there are free-marketeers such as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, who deny that human beings are to blame for the problems of global warming. Food is probably the greatest source of the greenhouse emissions which are changing our climate so dramatically. This situation is set to get far worse as the world’s population increases by 40 per cent, further exacerbated by rising affluence, which will lead to more people eating more food and, especially, more meat. On present trends, the world will have to double its food production over the next 30 years. What can Governments—collectively, as at Copenhagen, or separately—do to alleviate this dire situation? What can we, as citizens, do by changing our own behaviour? The first major nettle for Governments to grasp is that while most environmental pressure groups are right to be concerned about the impact of modern intensive farming systems on biodiversity, they are wrong to conclude that such methods contribute more to climate change than low intensive farming systems. The reverse is the case. The intensive farmer who produces 10 tonnes of wheat per hectare will almost certainly create lower CO2 emissions per tonne than an organic farmer who is producing only five tonnes per hectare. Yes, the latter is not using oil-based fertiliser, but he must plough and cultivate more than his counterpart; his need for organic fertiliser requires him to rely on methane-emitting livestock for this purpose; and, of course, his productivity or yield per hectare is half that of his conventional neighbour. If Governments and the public accept this argument—never mind the reality that a world totally dependent on organically produced food would be faced with a massive endemic famine—then all kinds of mitigating actions can be considered based mainly on backing responsible research into agricultural science and technology. These would include developing plants—probably but not exclusively through genetic modification—which reduce the need for ploughing, a very unhelpful practice; developing plants which can capture carbon rather than release it; developing plants which are more drought resistant and reduce the need for irrigation; developing plants which would be less dependent on nitrogen to produce a heavy crop; and developing machines which would apply fertiliser and chemicals more precisely and therefore less wastefully. At present these materials are applied haphazardly across a field. If each plant received only its own needs, far fewer chemicals would be needed and the environmental and cost benefits would be enormous. Next, farmers in the richer parts of the world have dramatically increased their outputs over the past 40 years, because they are big enough to raise the debts necessary to invest and apply modern science and technology. Sadly, farmers in the developing world have not been able to avail themselves of these technologies because they are far too small to raise the necessary collateral and, even if they did, their farms are too small to enable them to apply these methods. The level of waste experienced by poor farmers is shocking, as they cannot afford to protect their crops from insects, disease and weeds and lose much of them to the weather because of inadequate harvesting equipment. Many well meaning NGOs argue for a rural status quo in the developing world, understandably worrying about what might happen if, by applying more modern technology, vast numbers of farm workers would lose their jobs and have to migrate to the cities. They are wrong to adopt such a Canute-like position. Any time now, for the first time, the world’s urban population will exceed the rural one. That trend is accelerating in all parts of Asia, and even Africa. Such migrations create enormous social problems, as they did in 19th-century Britain, but they must be managed and not resisted. However bad urban poverty may be, rural poverty is almost always worse. I know this from observing rural poverty in Ireland as a child. If the social revolution takes place, the remaining fewer but larger farmers in the developing world will be able to raise the collateral to invest and dramatically increase their productivity although, as in the West, they must expect to be tightly regulated to minimise the harm caused to the environment by modern systems. In order to enable all this to happen, Governments must increase their support of agri-scientific research and not reduce it, as has been the case in recent years. But Governments can do only so much and, unless human beings, especially the rich ones, change their ways and their behaviour, the crisis will not be averted. Put simply, we eat too much, and too much of the wrong type of food, and we waste too much. By far the largest subsidy that rich consumers give to farmers is the huge amount of food that they buy from them and never use but throw away. More than 30 per cent of the children in my home county of East Yorkshire are obese. They are probably overeating by 20 per cent and they are probably consuming 50 per cent more, largely meat-based, fat than they should. Eventually, the penny is surely going to drop and, if it does, there will be a significant reduction in food demand, especially for meat, with a huge impact on slowing down climate change, never mind a dramatic improvement in the health of our citizens, especially the younger ones—and the capacity of the world to feed itself. Excessive food waste is a shameful reflection of a modern consumer society. We buy more food than we can possibly consume at home and in restaurants. We no longer bother to make a second meal out of our leftovers. As a result, 30 per cent of the food purchased in shops and restaurants is dumped. Think of the impact that there would be if we could significantly reduce this figure, both in reducing the emissions created in producing such food, and in reducing the environmental impact of disposing of this waste. Governments will, eventually, have to seriously penalise citizens for such dangerous practices through taxation and regulations. Sadly, however, most citizens would still appear to oppose such action and would punish any political party in the polling booths if it pursued such policies. That is why politicians are understandably reluctant to do the right thing, preferring instead to be champions of the motorist and the avaricious, self-indulgent consumer, and leave the market to sort it out, as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, suggested last night. The world will remain on the precipice of disaster as long as this nettle is not grasped and, as a result, the Copenhagen conference will be no more than a platform for frustrated but worthy people to let off ineffectual hot air and for the flat-earthers to deny that we have a serious problem. I hope that the next Queen’s Speech will be less timid in tackling these issues once the main political parties have got the general election behind them.