...but not a morsel to spare. Or so we are being led to believe by the Anderson Review. This view is further entrenched by the opposition's, Nick Herbert, highlighting our 'shockingly' increased reliance on food imports. Yet a question hangs over both of these opinions: what is the problem?
Why is food security important? To the government it represents a step in the process of controlling our food supply chains and food production. In no uncertain terms: nationalization. To the Conservatives the remaining large agri-businesses represent a key constituent in funding and support, and therefore anything they can do to increase agricultural prices to the detriment of the consumer will be undertaken. Both approaches show the short sighted, short-term gains and befuddled economic thinking of our current crop of inept politicians and inane civil servants.
Why do we want to produce something at a higher cost when someone else wants to do it for us, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than we can? Where is the benefit to us? Quite simply: there isn't any.
We currently hold enough intelligence to feed all the people of this world (and a few billion more). Yet we decide to hinder ourselves by attempting to make bio-fuels, subsidizing farming, rejecting GM Crops and embracing previous technologies that tie multiple farmers to the land in inefficient modes of production (re: organic and fair trade). All of this is done so that the moral minority can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that they are doing their bit to reduce their impact on the climate. They are living in the Dark Ages and pulling the already impoverished unto them, foisting a life of drudgery and despair on them. All in the name of their selfish ideal. We have been feeding ourselves since the New Stone Age, 10,000-15,000 years ago (becoming more successful as time passed). We need to end farm subsidies/food tariffs, privatize land and seas, and get government out of the way; this would lead to efficient production and resource allocation and the alleviation of food shortages.
