I'm looking at the question of food imports in the modern era. The first thing I must say is that this article is not part of Project Fear Brexit! I'll admit that the question of future trading relationships with the rest of the world must be considered but what I am concerned with is the danger of too high a dependence on imported food in an increasingly uncertain world.
I've lived a long time and seen many things but I can never remember being as uncertain about the future as I am now and this includes the war years. I'm sure that the general picture of rising population, climate stress for whatever reason and the consequent world shortages of food and increase in migration of large numbers of people has got the attention of many of you. As I said last week, the supermarkets have never had more food on the shelves, greater choice and innovations like the growth of the Just Eat campaign and a general decline in home cooking or even having food stocks on the shelves. My fear is that we may be living in a fool's paradise.
The latest figures I can find are for 2017 and we import roughly 60% of all our food. I say roughly because it is complicated! The same figures for 1981 were 35%. So all I can be certain of is that our total food imports are about the same as they were before WW2 and remember that a large proportion of that figure was from the empire. At the same time, if enough resources were put into farming, it is nowhere near as good as it is possible to achieve. The conclusion I draw from all this is that we import far too much. The question is, what can we do about it. I have another certainty, I don't trust 'The Market'! It has a nasty habit of disregarding the human element and operating in such a way as to preserve itself and the people profiting from it.
Normally as during the war, we would expect our government to recognise the dangers and take steps to protect us but I'm afraid that this isn't going to happen, out political systems appear to have gone mad. It may be down to us to act in our own best interests. For a start, let's all try to support home grown produce even if it costs a bit more. That can be balanced by buying natural foods and cooking it ourselves, if you want an example of this look at the price of a ready-meal containing ingredients from Lord knows where and compare it to what it would cost you to do the same thing at home. The same applies to take-away food but in doing this I don't include the traditional take-away shops selling fish and chips or good meat pies, you know who they are and can trust them. If you are fit, apply for an allotment. We need a new campaign, 'Dig and Cook for Survival'!
Let's hear it for the cottage pig!