Severe floods 'threaten food security'

Severe floods 'threaten food security', say farmers and environmental groups
Government accused of failing to address effects of climate change on coastal and rural areas

Severe flooding threatens to undermine the country's food security, according to farmers and environmental groups, who today accuse the government of failing to address the effects of climate change on coastal and rural areas.

As gales swept southern and western parts of the UK, with already drenched counties bearing the brunt of the storms, it has emerged that parliament's select committee on the environment warned in a report last year that "the current model for allocating flood defence funding is biased towards protecting property, which means that funding is largely allocated to urban areas. Defra's [the Department of the Environment's] failure to protect rural areas poses a long-term risk to the security of UK food production, as a high proportion of the most valuable agricultural land is at risk of flooding."

"We need a response from government that recognises the importance for our long-term food security of safeguarding high-quality farmland," said Neil Sinden of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. "We need to view the countryside as more than a place for building, and value it for the food it provides."

Defra has estimated that 35,000 hectares of high-quality horticultural and arable land will be flooded at least once every three years by the 2020s. This could rise to around 130,000 hectares by the 2080s if there is no change to current flood defence provision.

Peter Kendall, chairman of the National Farmers Union, which has produced evidence showing that 58% of England's most productive farmland lies within a floodplain, said the floods were a wake-up call for a country that has "believed for too long that producing food wasn't a big issue".

"We are seeing more of these intense extreme weather events," Kendall said. "Climate change does now really challenge mankind's ability to feed itself."

He said much of the flooding was down to "almost a deliberate policy of neglect of the watercourses" that had seen the Environment Agency "putting birds first and people second", a reference to the agency's attempts to encourage more wetland areas in the UK to promote biodiversity.

His comments were the latest salvo fired at the agency's chairman, Lord Smith, who was defended robustly by wildlife charities. In a letter in the Observer, the heads of the RSPB, the Wildfowl and Wetland Trusts, the Wildlife Trusts and the Angling Trust, said: "Ultimately, it is governments that have set the policies that have hamstrung flood planning in some vulnerable areas: allowing homes to be built and failing to make both homes and farmland more resilient to floods. Cuts to the Environment Agency merely risk reducing it from a flood-management body to an emergency response service and making future floods even more damaging."

Whistleblowers within the agency told the Observer that frontline flood staff were being cut, despite Smith's pledges that reducing the agency's emergency response was a "red line" that could not be crossed.

"People need to be aware that some of the frontline staff are taking a big hit, particularly when we are facing some of the worst flooding ever seen in southern England," said one EA source. He said that, at the same time that frontline staff were being put onto 24/7 duty rotas, managers were being asked to cut staff by 13% across all regions. "This salami slicing approach is entirely wrong," he said.

"This government is steadily dismantling the nation's ability to tackle flooding and prepare for climate change," said Friends of the Earth's Guy Shrubsole.

An Environment Agency spokesman said: "The planned reductions in posts will not affect the Environment Agency's ability to respond to flooding incidents."

The government's response to the floods is threatening to damage the Tory brand in rural areas. Jeremy Browne, the Liberal Democrat MP for Taunton Deane, said that the Conservatives had left themselves open to criticism, having rebranded themselves as a "green" party, only to lose enthusiasm after a couple of years in office.

"People have good reason to believe that that was a fairly cynical exercise and that much of the party remains unconvinced of the need to have a coherent environmental policy," Browne said.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/08/severe-floods-threaten-food-security-climate-change


It strikes me that without being able to produce enough food, we will be hostage to whatever country we have to buy it from, and the economy will never recover.

Who do you think we have o thank for importing so many people that we are short of housing and potentially food?

The bloody party you think can do no wrong.

You have some cheek Sassy you have been posting to us telling us we are wrong to be concerned about immigration for years.

You are the most disingenuous person I know though your current boyfriend Bru comes close. :D 

What the fuck has that got to do with our ability to produce food being half wiped out. You'd be a cretin if you stepped up a notch.

Hopefully some more of the new green Tories will latch onto the issue of climate change's effects being writ large across Britain.

 

BRITAIN hasn't produced enough food for themselves for about, oh, some 400 years or so, now !!!!

A BIT late to start complaining now, methinks !

  

Back in the 17th century, you lot invaded Ireland, and stole their farms..

AND you also began importing food in a big way from the Americas, chiefly the US east coast and the West Indies..

During the 18th century you added Australia and New Zealand into the mix, and then in the late 19th century India, Sri Lanka and the Malay Peninsula (now modern-day Malaysia, Burma,  and the southern part of Thailand..), South Africa and Rhodesia were also in there.

BY the 1950s New Zealand was probably Britain's main "food bowl", though most Poms wouldn't have given it a second thought ~ after all, your lovely green countryside was still there every time people ventured out into "the wilds", away from the towns where the majority of Brit's were then living..

  

AND THEN in the 1970s Britain joined the EEC, downgrading its former ties with it's long time suppliers, finally kissing them goodbye as it upgraded through the EU, importing more of it's foodstuffs from it's European neighbours...

SO y'all will excuse me for a moment while I sneak off over to the corner, and laugh at those farmers and environmentalists who are NOW  predicting "a loss in food security" AFTER the event --> where were they some twenty, thirty, forty years ago !  

Beekeeper wrote: 

BRITAIN hasn't produced enough food for themselves for about, oh, some 400 years or so, now !!!!

A BIT late to start complaining now, methinks !

  

Back in the 17th century, you lot invaded Ireland, and stole their farms..

AND you also began importing food in a big way from the Americas, chiefly the US east coast and the West Indies..

During the 18th century you added Australia and New Zealand into the mix, and then in the late 19th century India, Sri Lanka and the Malay Peninsula (now modern-day Malaysia, Burma,  and the southern part of Thailand..), South Africa and Rhodesia were also in there.

BY the 1950s New Zealand was probably Britain's main "food bowl", though most Poms wouldn't have given it a second thought ~ after all, your lovely green countryside was still there every time people ventured out into "the wilds", away from the towns where the majority of Brit's were then living..

  

AND THEN in the 1970s Britain joined the EEC, downgrading its former ties with it's long time suppliers, finally kissing them goodbye as it upgraded through the EU, importing more of it's foodstuffs from it's European neighbours...

SO y'all will excuse me for a moment while I sneak off over to the corner, and laugh at those farmers and environmentalists who are NOW  predicting "a loss in food security" AFTER the event --> where were they some twenty, thirty, forty years ago !  

Agreed - huge mistake to abandon our Commonwealth partners in favour of the bloody awful EU. Said so at the time we joined the EEC, loud and clear, but no-one was listening. Bit late now. Too too many mistakes over the past 40 years. What can they do now? multi-storey greenhouses or something I suppose.

Tess. wrote:

Beekeeper wrote: 

BRITAIN hasn't produced enough food for themselves for about, oh, some 400 years or so, now !!!!

A BIT late to start complaining now, methinks !

  

Back in the 17th century, you lot invaded Ireland, and stole their farms..

AND you also began importing food in a big way from the Americas, chiefly the US east coast and the West Indies..

During the 18th century you added Australia and New Zealand into the mix, and then in the late 19th century India, Sri Lanka and the Malay Peninsula (now modern-day Malaysia, Burma,  and the southern part of Thailand..), South Africa and Rhodesia were also in there.

BY the 1950s New Zealand was probably Britain's main "food bowl", though most Poms wouldn't have given it a second thought ~ after all, your lovely green countryside was still there every time people ventured out into "the wilds", away from the towns where the majority of Brit's were then living..

  

AND THEN in the 1970s Britain joined the EEC, downgrading its former ties with it's long time suppliers, finally kissing them goodbye as it upgraded through the EU, importing more of it's foodstuffs from it's European neighbours...

SO y'all will excuse me for a moment while I sneak off over to the corner, and laugh at those farmers and environmentalists who are NOW  predicting "a loss in food security" AFTER the event --> where were they some twenty, thirty, forty years ago !  

Agreed - huge mistake to abandon our Commonwealth partners in favour of the bloody awful EU.  Said so at the time we joined the EEC, loud and clear, but no-one was listening.  Bit late now.  Too too many mistakes over the past 40 years.  What can they do now?  multi-storey greenhouses or something I suppose.

Couldnt agree more.

We have the most efficient farms in the EU. We also have had such a huge influx of immigration that out infrastructure is under pressure e.g. in dry summers we have limited water storage. Whilst it is true we are not self sufficient in many foodstuffs or production per hectare of crops native and suitable for these Isles bests any of our European rivals

Defra has estimated that 35,000 hectares of high-quality horticultural and arable land will be flooded at least once every three years by the 2020s. This could rise to around 130,000 hectares by the 2080s if there is no change to current flood defence provision.

Peter Kendall, chairman of the National Farmers Union, which has produced evidence showing that 58% of England's most productive farmland lies within a floodplain, said the floods were a wake-up call for a country that has "believed for too long that producing food wasn't a big issue".


Talk about deflection from the real issue. Nearly 60% of our most productive farmland lies on a floodplain, if the climate carries on like this we could be in real trouble. But never mind, lets try and deflect and talk about immigrants - again. Heads firmly up arses and not likely to see anything but shit.

sick thing is...the govt is rakeing in millions, if not billions in "carbon taxes"...all out of our pocket..where's it all going? It just "disappears" into their friends pockets and idiot schemes like wind farms etc...

shouldnt this money be used for these flood defences?

Certainly should. But it's more than that, there should have been a long term plan in place, and they are all guilty of not doing that. I don't care who or what is causing climate change, it's happening, and if we don't acknowledge it and DO something about it we are in dead trouble.

yeah well you are quite right. I dont want 1000's of refugees from those areas causing housing shortages and infra structure shortages up here. Not to mention language problems.

You are a frogturd Victor lol. Very few people to the acre on farmland.