For the first time since the Second World War, the UK has a Council looking at Food Security, reports the Telegraph. At the recent Chatham House Conference on Food Security, Hilary Benn launched the Council of Food Policy Advisors while declaring:

With rising prices and increasing demand across the globe, we can’t take our food supply for granted. Our food supply needs to be reliable and resilient and able to withstand shocks and crises.

. . . the foods that can be produced in this country we are currently 74% self-sufficient – a higher proportion than in the 1930s or the 1950s . . .

Our food supplies must remain secure, and we must have a strong, thriving, environmentally sustainable farming industry in this country that continues to produce a significant proportion of our food.

He concludes with a worthy statement of intent:

The simple truth is that it is wrong in the 21st century that anyone should go to bed hungry at night.

And it is our job to make sure that it is in the 21st century that we make this poverty, and this hunger, history. 

Amen to that.

Share/Save