Noodle cup pot Getty

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With each turn of the screw in its anti-farmer agenda, it’s becoming crystal-clear this government’s idea of food security is a larder full of pot noodles.

How else can one explain Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Inheritance Tax raid on farmers, and environment secretary Steve Reed’s announcement that more than 10% of farmland in England will be taken out of agricultural production by 2050?

Food policy in Whitehall, if not in the devolved regions, has been dictated by technocratic corporates for years. You can see this bias in subsequent UK governments’ blind faith in gene editing, new GMOs, and similar reckless ventures.

The current urban elitist government relies on data modelled by grant-chasing academics who lack food production knowledge. It acts rashly on apocalyptic warnings from ‘green’ idealogues who falsely pit food production against nature.

Combined with its antipathy to the existing food producers who have soil under their nails, this mindset condemns the population to ever-escalating food prices and food shortages.

In the name of net zero, it appears Labour is hell-bent on doing as much damage to our traditional, reliable food production system as possible before it gets kicked out of office. It has starkly exposed the British tendency to gullibly believe in speculative techno-fixes, rather than backing people with a proven track record in producing good food from our land.

The Brits have long shown a self-harming fondness for junk food. Watch Call the Midwife and you’ll see the Poplar nuns dishing out pineapple chunks and custard creams as a form of solace to the struggling populace.

In We Live In Time, the London-set film currently screening, there’s a scene where after breaking a diagnosis of terminal cancer to young parents, the consultant offers them their pick from her Quality Street selection box, as if this was some consolation.

The fact that BBC One’s series Inside the Factory, so besotted and bedazzled with industrial food, is now in its ninth series, illustrates how early-industrialised Britain can get food all wrong.

I feel for our farmers and growers who must summon up the confidence and steadfastness to keep going while praying that Whitehall belatedly sees sense. Unless they stay strong, I dread to think what our children and grandchildren will be eating come 2050.

 

Joanna Blythman is a food journalist and author of Swallow This