Food security - what do you mean?

A report of the May 2008 meeting of the FEC’s Business Forum

A surge in commodity prices has pushed 'food security' up the agenda in policy, business and public debate. Yet the term is used to promote everything from self-sufficiency to social justice. The May 2008 meeting of the Food Ethics Council’s (FEC) Business Forum discussed what it means and what factors affect it.

The meeting was chaired by Helen Browning OBE, Food and Farming Director of the Soil Association and a member of the FEC.

We are very grateful to our speakers, Professor Philip Lowe OBE, Director of the Rural Economy and Land Use programme and Dr. David Barling, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Food Policy at City University London.

Key points from the meeting include:

• Some see the current short-term spike in food commodity prices to end the long-term downward trend in real food prices.
• Poorer consumers who spend proportionately more on food are hurt by higher prices, while potential gains for producers are eroded by higher input costs.
• A key concern for many businesses is to maintain profitability, if necessary by passing costs to their customers.
• Higher prices may put pressure on the environment, as land is farmed harder.
• Inflation has pushed food security up the policy agenda. Internationally, this means a renewed focus on tackling hunger and malnutrition. In this sense, food security is better seen as a question of demand and distribution, than supply and productivity.
• In the UK, renewed interest in food security owes more to geopolitical concerns about resource scarcity and supply chain resilience.
• Many stakeholders accept the UK government’s long-standing principle that national self-sufficiency is not necessary to food security, but challenge the prudence of the UK’s laissez-faire approach.
• A City University study proposes the concept of ‘food capacity’, which is about building the foundations for a resilient, healthy and sustainable food system.
• This demands major public investment, including in research.