Is now the time for a UK food policy reform?

By Dr Clive Black, Vice Chairman of Shore Capital Markets

One of the key mantras of Labour’s campaign rhetoric has been ‘growth’, which is a sensible and necessary mindset given the high levels of national debt and the current elevated personal and corporate tax take. Also, ringing in the ears of the future Chancellor’s mind will be the financial markets’ (especially currency and gilts) reaction to the naivety of the Truss-Kwarteng tenure.

Ultimately, engineering growth is unlikely to emerge through chance, cutting taxes or public services. I do tend to agree in this important – albeit, at times, eyelid-dropping – subject with the respected Andy Haldane, that the UK Government, with the Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in tow, should raise the UK’s debt to GDP threshold to create the room to necessarily invest in the supply side of the economy, beyond liberating the planning regime, and so, through growth and in time, improve the nation’s solvency ratios.

Within this context, the Labour Party also speaks to the evolution of a complementary industrial policy, the state and business working to make 1+1=3. Again, this is welcome rhetoric after the chaos of the Tories, but what will it mean in praxis and, particularly, for the British food system? In this respect, I am encouraged that Labour wants to look at harnessing opportunities around net zero/ sustainability, life sciences and well-being, too.

What worries me, though, is that the British food system is not at the fore of government thinking. One reason for this is the ubiquity of food, as it is not easy to harness with its reach into just about every Whitehall department, which is why I continue to believe in the merit of a Minister of the State for the Food System, who sits in the Cabinet, reports to the Prime Minister and seeks to coordinate British food policy in all of its many guises.

Without such coordination, conversations about the role of parents and the education system, the health network, farm policy, higher research priorities, international trade stances and so forth will remain in narrow silos where necessary connections are not made, policy is dis-coordinated and outcomes become sub-optimal.

The food system is the largest in the UK, employing over four million people, accommodating millions of square feet of farm land, factory space, retail aisles and logistics footage, not to mention canteens, cafes and restaurants and, it so happens, providing a high proportion of the nation’s foodstuffs, but not enough. It is an industry where there is, to me, undoubted growth potential that, if undertaken in an appropriate manner, can absolutely enhance the economic growth agenda and be meaningfully positive to aforementioned wider government aims, too.

UK food policy, however, must be considered through a number of lenses, starting with farm to fork, so not reducing it to important but narrow agricultural or horticultural matters, as Prime Minister Sunak’s Food Summit II ended up, as opposed to end-to-end thinking. Such an approach needs an attitude of mind where the whole food system, including public procurement, thinks about the food it needs and wants, where it comes from, how it is produced and the economics through the chain.

From a UK perspective, the security of supply is something that needs strategic and tactical thinking alike by the State; I would suggest, again, by a Minister of the Food System’s secretariat, that then curates and oversees with practical industry, environmental, health and consumer participants, the evolution of the production, processing, retailing and food & beverage sectors. That assertion has never been more relevant since the end of WWII in 1945 and, with the outlook for geopolitics giving more reason for worry than comfort, needs to be underscored.

To be clear, this is not to prescribe what people eat but it is, with the education and health departments and lobbies, too, to evolve a food system that is good for the environment, animal welfare, society and the investment returns of the sector. The latter is an important point that is not thought through well enough to me.

Farmers and growers are not charities and, it should be said, in good times they keep very quiet. Additionally, though, whole foods often need processing (folks do not tend to buy a bushel of wheat or a live pig), shelf-life enhancement, storage, distribution and preparation/cooking; underscoring the end-to-end nature of the system. Each of these verticals need to make a margin not just to get by, but also re-invest, and to suggest that the British food system could survive by squeezing processor, retail and food and beverage margins is lunacy, too. 

Rather, we need an honest debate in this country, distilled down to the child level, about where our food comes from and the system that is in place to nurture and sustain it. Such thinking means a strategy around soil fertility that enables carbon sequestration and optimisation of on-farm inputs, the latter embracing the agri-supply sector. A soil strategy that feeds into bovine and ovine diets and outputs, which encourages optimal use of land, utilises natural bi-products of intensive livestock, builds biodiversity and, perhaps from a growth strategy, most critically, produces more primary product in the UK in ways that meets State and societal expectations.

To do so requires capital, be that from the State or retained profits, and I would contend that the best way to do so is a profitable end-to-end food system that has the basis to reinvest in an expanding domestic food system where security and safety are enhanced. Doing so, therefore, means informing the public that their food is not an output of a charitable entity but something for which payment is necessary, which may also feed into a fresher approach around food waste.

Such a view is not a licence for supernormal profitability or ripping off consumers, as opposed to a grown up and balanced approach, and structures, where the State enhances and encourages the system’s evolution. Indeed, anyone who thinks that the UK supermarket sector lacks competitiveness (sub-5% trading margins) or enjoys supernormal returns on capital (sub-10%) needs their heads examined, something that again displays the dangers of narrow minded and misinformed noise.

From a British perspective, such an evolving system must further build upon the undoubted high-quality resources of our academic research centres. Indeed, State funding should be established with the aim of seeing the benefit of investment to solve problems, enable measurement and enhance the evolution of a more self-sufficient, efficient and capable food system that is more secure, generates wealth, narrows the trade deficit and fulfils its undoubted potential. Such thought processes are very exciting to me; an evolving UK food system that is not only better at embracing innovation, but actually curating and driving ongoing improvement in capability.

Other industrial systems in the UK, of course, have their needs and wants, too; but, too often, the British food system is overlooked compared to car batteries, steel and the like, because it is fragmented, multi-departmental from a State perspective, with issues that, like diet and well-being, is just too difficult to properly address. Whilst so, that is absolutely not an excuse to sustain the status quo, given the importance of the matters to hand.

The new Labour government has a great opportunity, perhaps a multi-generational one, to bring the British food system together, coordinated by a Minster of the Food System, to harness the immense needs and potential that it offers to curate a bigger and better industry to materially contribute to economic growth in the UK for many years to come. Whilst so, I am not convinced that such interest and thinking is presently in place to capture this opportunity, but not to do so would be more than a miss-step; it would be a shot into both feet.

Hence, I implore Prime Minister Starmer to think outside the departmental boxes, more or less ignore the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as a starting point for UK food system thinking and so create new end-to-end structures that look to unlock the potential of the whole British food system to contribute to economic growth whilst improving and protecting animal welfare, biodiversity and the wider sustainability agenda, making the food system a place where the labour process shines, underpin food security and safety, encourage our research institutes to make the UK the most digitally enabled food system in the world, whilst also feeding into health policies where the system is part of the solution, not the problem.

What is not to like?