From false choices toward real change
We cannot carry on treating our food, farming and countryside as we do currently. We are failing our citizens, our communities and our environment.
Climate change is accelerating
2017 was one of the world’s three warmest years on record. Globally, sea levels continue to rise, greenhouse gas concentrations have increased, and the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is melting fast. In the UK, floods, droughts, and heat waves are becoming increasingly normal.
Biodiversity has plummeted
The UK has lost significantly more nature over the long-term than the global average, making it one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. In the last 50 years, almost 60 percent of species have declined (making the UK #189 on the global rankings).
Soil fertility has collapsed
Agricultural soil has been so severely degraded that some of England’s most productive agricultural land could become unprofitable within a generation due to soil erosion and loss of organic carbon. The UK’s Environment Secretary has estimated that the UK is 30 to 40 years away from the fundamental eradication of soil fertility in parts of the country.
Poverty and food bank usage continues to rise
4 million children in the UK live in households that can’t meet the official nutrition guidelines; food bank usage has increased 13 percent in just a single year, with over 1.3m emergency food supplies delivered to people in crisis.
Diet-induced illness is spiralling
Almost 4 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes in the UK — 90 percent of these have type 2 diabetes. Diet-related, type 2 diabetes costs the NHS £12bn a year, with a further £15bn (for all types of diabetes) due to absenteeism, early retirement and benefits. That’s equivalent to over £1.5m an hour or 10 percent of the NHS budget for England and Wales.
Pay is low in farming and the food sector
Nearly 40 percent of people in agriculture, forestry and fishing and 60 percent of people in the food services sector are on low paid jobs. (Low-wage is generally defined as employees earning two thirds or less of the national median gross hourly earnings.)
The rural-urban divide has become increasingly stark
Only 8 percent of housing in rural areas is affordable compared to 20 percent in urban areas; almost a quarter of households in rural area have no, or slow, broadband compared to 5 percent in urban areas. Half of households in the most rural areas have regular bus services compared with almost all urban households.
These problems are not new. They are replete with real and stubborn challenges and tough choices. Many are shared with other nations. The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to which the UK has committed, provide a framework for addressing them.[2]
But when it comes to solving these interdependent and systemic challenges, not only are they proving wickedly intractable, but some are getting worse. Not least, this is because of the impossible choices we are told face us:
● Do we want food quality and production standards that everyone expects or food everyone can afford?
● Do we want to protect fragile ecosystems or feed 9 billion people?
● Do we want diversity in our farms, villages and towns or consolidated, efficient economies?
As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, it is time to question the way these ‘choices’ are presented. Most obviously, this is because our regulations, standards, subsidies and trade policies dealing with food, farming and the countryside have developed in step with other European countries, notably through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Leaving the EU forces us to think anew.
Yet it is also because people are reacting against these choices, and voicing frustration at the underlying assumptions that make them seem unquestionable. Behind these apparent choices is the notion that ‘there’s not enough to go around’. This is the case for many aspects of civil life — from concerns about local government budgets to debates about feeding the world.
The people we met across the UK, and our discussions and research, have led us to a different view. Instead, we ask, in the sixth richest country in the world, how can we use the resources we have more fairly, effectively and sustainably? How can we steward the same piece of land, so it produces food, protects wildlife and provides affordable homes? How much more can communities achieve when they pool and coordinate more of the resources available to them?
We have found many examples of why this change is needed — of people and places left behind, misunderstood, or written off by a detached, city-centred view of progress. We have also found many examples of how to do things better.
This matters to everyone. Discussions about food, farming and the countryside have been plagued by narrow visions, opaque interests and fragmented thinking within and between government, businesses and communities, which have been driven to compete in ways that are unhelpful for everyone.
Treating these big questions like a zero-sum game creates a rapid race to the bottom.
The RSA Food, Farming and Countryside Commission was established with different values. We believe that, when you bring people together with different perspectives, to look closely at those parts of the system otherwise ignored, and ask people what works, it creates practical and radical possibilities for fair and sustainable outcomes.
We know that some have said the remit and mandate of this Commission is too wide and that we should “focus” more. This is another false choice. We argue that it is not only possible but essential that we keep the whole system in view, because it is in the relationships between the big policy categories where some of the most promising policy developments lie.
We argue that it is essential that we:
- Protect and regenerate our planet, land and landscapes AND meet our needs for energy, food, housing, ensuring access for all
- Support safe, sustainable and secure farming systems in the UK AND globally, without exporting the negative impacts of our first world choices
- Provide enough healthy AND affordable food for everyone.
- Grow flourishing economies and communities, making the best use of all resources available, in both rural AND urban contexts.
We are also persuaded to look beyond the limited aspirations of halting decline or maintaining business as usual, to policies that support regeneration — of our environment, our economies and our communities. We acknowledge that this requires courage, imagination, perseverance and determination, but we believe such efforts are not only justified but urgently needed.
If we don’t rise to this challenge, the current trajectory sends us inexorably towards a society in which our environment is degraded beyond recovery, people become unhealthier and unhappier through diet, poverty and loneliness, the strains in society bring further fragmentation and disconnection — and even less capacity to act to change direction.
We live in an increasingly complex and sophisticated world. We can no longer accept one-dimensional policies designed to achieve single objectives, or siloed policy-making, blind to the perverse incentives, costs and counter-productive side-effects created elsewhere. This is why we are encouraged by the UK Government’s response to Sir Michael Barber’s Public Value Review and its adoption of the Public Value Framework, which determines how public money is turned into results for citizens.
It is also why we believe that the kind of changes we advocate will be widely welcome. For, as we have heard around the UK, farmers and growers, people in the countryside and towns, and retailers and producers, are all struggling in different ways with the big challenges that face us all. We are encouraged that when people get together with others they do not usually encounter, they are inspired and motivated by the conversations and the ideas that arise.
Our inquiry is still very much in progress: at this point, we are setting out our thinking, the responses to our engagements to this point, and we are seeking your views. As we write, negotiations on leaving the EU remain fraught and the Agriculture Bill is working through Parliament. While these and other developments have yielded fresh and challenging ideas, the same impossible choices are still on the table. The proposals in this report are our first ideas for how we could put a different approach into practice.
Our work has been shaped by the commissioners’ commitment to hear from people around the UK who do not usually have a voice in national policy debates, and to come up with radical and practical solutions. Our team has toured the UK, convened inquiries in the devolved nations, and in three counties of England. We have also reviewed a thousand proposals that identify the key issues and gaps and held workshops on these topics. Our inquiries will continue into the spring and contribute to our final report in 2019.
Some of these proposals may feel familiar, some may seem new. But most of them are based on the same insight, which was repeated during our research — that the siloed nature of policymaking and practice leads to cynicism, disconnection, false choices and waste.
