It should stand to reason, but doesn’t. That Our Future starts with Food and Food starts with Farming..

Some of us are already unable to eat healthy meals, because heavily processes foods are all that we can access.

Others miss meals so they can feed other members of their families, whilst increasing numbers don’t eat because food is simply a luxury that they cannot afford.

It’s easy to dismiss the realities of other’s life experience when we’ve never had to go without a good healthy meal at any time in our life. But that doesn’t mean that any of us are safe or protected from the questions surrounding Food Security in the UK today. Questions that left unanswered may mean that we all have massive problems in store – potentially any day.

Politicians are treating UK Farming and Food Production as a political inconvenience; as if they will always be able to source the food that the UK needs from Europe or from other Countries abroad – Because politicians assume that imports will always be safe.

Meanwhile, the elites look upon the stories of food being grown in warehouses, created from ground up insects, from fungi or from processes that are even worse, and are very happy with the idea that this is how the masses will soon be fed. Because the true realities that underpin manufactured, processed and synthesized foods are not a problem that they believe could ever affect them.

Food is a basic essential of life.

Food is therefore a public good.

Yet generations of politicians have allowed commercial interests to take over almost every part of food production and supply across the UK.

Small numbers of very wealthy people and the companies they own make more and more money from addicting as many of us as possible to foods that taste nice and look good. And many genuinely believe that they are good for us, for no better reason than these highly attractive and fashionable foods appear to be a luxury that most people can afford.

What the companies don’t tell any of us, as they sell us as much of everything that they can, is that the price we pay at the till might seem comparatively low. But the true cost to our health and to our future could be very high indeed.

The politicians and the narratives that the money behind this avoidable direction of UK Food Supply buys, deliberately tells us that Climate Change, the needs of Net Zero and with too many people to feed, the food of the future does not lie with farming or food production of any traditional kind.

But this is a constructed story that simply isn’t true and benefits only those who want continually growing profits and the control over everything that maintain it.

The narrative is all about destroying the ability that the UK currently has to feed our own population and creating a situation where the same people who are responsible for so many of our problems – just so they can make money, will be able to make even more. Because in time, their actions will make democratic forms of government redundant and will be able to assume absolute control.

This is no conspiracy. This is what the systematic destruction of UK Farming and the ability of UK Farmers and Food Producers to run viable businesses has been and is all about.

It is time to wake up to the reality that the future the establishment proposes for us all, because they know better, isn’t the healthy future that any of us need. Nor is it one that is necessary or inevitable for us to have.

However, without change, we will soon no longer have any choice.

The world has many problems. But it is the abuse and manipulation of money and how that affects every part of our lives that is the real problem underpinning them all.

Those who care only about money, don’t care about people.

That means they are not worried about what any one else eats. Especially if there are public health systems in place that will continue to address the problems they cause and that their friends with pharmaceutical companies can also continue to make profits from, by providing many different expensive treatments for.

Funny that they never create any cures.

Politicians will not address the issues that the World faces. Because it is not in the interests of their ‘careers’ and whatever they believe they have to gain in the future, by not going against these ‘interests’ and by otherwise not making decisions that are in the best interests of the people who elected them instead.

This is why when asked, politicians appear to understand the problem and talk about solutions. But nothing ever happens that addresses the real issues that they have facilitated and therefore caused.

Food is our Freedom. As long as the Food we eat remains under our control

What we eat is the foundation of everything that we do. It is the foundation of our future. It is the foundation of our lives.

If we surrender what is left of our ability to choose what we eat and where our food comes from, we will no longer be able to make choices about our health or the health of the people we care about.

The only way that we can maintain the little control we have over food and then increase it to where that control should be, is to ensure that the UK Produces all of its own food.

We must ensure that the food the UK Produces always comes from natural processes, growing and animal husbandry that takes place on local UK Farms.

It is no understatement to say that the food we eat, that makes other people very wealthy, is actively destroying our health. In growing numbers of cases, it is slowly killing us too.

We need to put Food Production and Supply back into the hands of people and business that we know and can trust.

Whilst we continue to be without politicians who will stand up for us and legislate for us all as they should, the best way that we can help to instigate the changes that we all so desperately need, is to buy as much basic or essential food that isn’t processed, from local farms or from small shops and businesses that source everything they sell from local farmers and suppliers.

Basic or essential food is food or food products that we buy in a form that is recognisable for being in its original form, or has undergone basic processing such as milling, pasteurisation, breadmaking or cheesemaking etc., that doesn’t involve the addition of manufactured ingredients or additives and could or traditionally would have been processed or prepared by hand.

The more we use small businesses, independent retailers who are committed to local food production, and farm shops and box schemes that are from identifiable sources too, the more accessible and affordable the food we should all be able to eat every day will become.

It’s a lot of responsibility for every one of us. But the people we elected to take that responsibility on our behalf are effectively refusing to do so.

It’s the actions of our politicians that we all need to watch, rather than just accepting their words.

Instead of leading us, it is the Politicians who need to be led.

The best way to lead our politicians is to demonstrate how change works without them. So that joining the growing momentum the People create will feel right to them, rather than making a choice which they currently  believe would make them look like they are wrong.

The real problem and barrier to progress in achieving the meaningful change that UK farmers and food producers need, is agreeing on what change is needed and what that change will therefore be.

The number of people, business owners, organisations and lobbying organisations that have an interest in the future of farming and food production, simply because of the many areas that the food chain touches and relates to, is mind boggling.

Every one of them has a different take on what’s happening. What the real issues or causes and effects of the problems are. And therefore what the solution needs to achieve.

In many cases, that also means they will already have an idea of what the solution needs to be.

This is where everything hits the metaphorical brick wall. Because we all have a habit of getting emotionally tied into the dynamic of the experience we have vs the problem as we see it vs what we know the solution needs to be or look like for us.

Work together. Find all that we have in common. Then we will have common cause

It’s frustrating to watch the same old arguments unfold and play out between different interests that have so much more in common than what are probably just a few ideas that divide them.

Ideas that would probably be progressed anyway, by focusing on what aims we share in common, with the people that we might today be refusing to listen to. Because the few things we appear to disagree on appear to make everything else they have to say or can do to help us, wrong.

For instance, we all:

• Need to eat (healthy food that will not harm us)
• Need to drink (clean, healthy water)
• Need food and water that is natural with a good nutritional base
• Want eating healthy food to be ‘normal’ or easy
• Want food to be readily accessible to us at a price that we can afford
• Need Food Security
• Need the UK Food supply to be sustainable
• Need the planet to continue being able to support our lives
• Want to be happy

And there will certainly be more.

However, the issues we see about issues like climate change (and whether it’s real), money, being vegetarian or vegan, rewilding, wild animals, animal welfare standards, who deserves to be guaranteed access to food, hedgerows, building on productive land, what a sustainable life really looks like and just about everything else that can be argued as being personal to us and therefore how we see ourselves, is a belief.

It isn’t what we have in common.

That’s why adopting a purist approach and saying anyone or all of these priorities we have MUST be the end result, in order for us to agree, is what stops us all from coming together to achieve something that could quickly become very good.

This post has been taken and adapted from the book Food From Farms Guaranteed, published on Amazon, 16/02/24.

We need to ask the questions: ‘What does it mean to be a stakeholder?’ and ‘Who are the real stakeholders?’

Because the interests of the people who are guiding, influencing and controlling the most visible forms of food standards that communicate what farmers do to those who consume the food produced, are not focused or aligned with the interests of the most important stakeholders who are located at each end.

The focus of power and influence in UK food production is instead directed to the many middle parts of what is in the main an otherwise unnecessary chain.

No value is added. But production prices are squeezed from every angle, whilst the price to the consumer is repeatedly being raised.

The role of commercial, profit and greed-led businesses in UK food production is bad enough. But any argument that statutory authorities have the right to dictate the direction of food production and also insert themselves into the food chain as a key stakeholder, is willfully and deliberately misplaced and, in all honesty, wrong.

Government and the public sector exists to serve the people. Not to make every decision that will dictate what any person or what any business can do.

This is where we are all getting our relationship with the establishment and every part of it wrong.

This post was taken and adapted from the book Food From Farms Guaranteed, published on Amazon, 16/02/24.

Whilst I am hesitant to say anything that places advocacy and lobbyist organisations like the NFU and any of the representatives who speak for them in a bad light, because I don’t intend to, it has to be said that no matter what meetings they have, what promises they receive or whatever headlines they make, lobbyist organisations like them will not achieve the results that farmers need.

Because for them, the approach that would be needed and the perceived risk to the relationships that they have with politicians, government departments, NGOs, business and retailers, or many other organisations by doing what needs to be done, is perceived to be too high.

This isn’t a criticism. This is how established and well-known lobbying organisations work, right across every area of public policy.

They value the relationship that they have with the establishment more than they do the need to do whatever it will take to achieve meaningful solutions for the people and businesses that they represent.

That results in compromise, fudges and being grateful for nothing more than politicians, business and public sector leaders paying lip service to the idea that the change they offer is the same thing as a genuine outcome being achieved.

To be fair, one of the myths that too many of us have bought into is the idea that politicians and the establishment do actually know and understand what they are doing. That they have integrity with the responsibility they have to the electorate, and that they are therefore people we can trust.

Few have a real appreciation of the interconnectedness of every problem that exists within the realm of Public Policy, and I’m afraid that I speak from experience when I say that this very much includes the politicians who are supposedly in Westminster and within the devolved Administrations who are there to legislate on our behalf.

This post has been taken from Food From Farms Guaranteed, Published on Amazon 16/02/24.

To read in FULL online, please click the link immediately below:

FOOD FROM FARMS GUARANTEED | Full Text

Who controls Our Food controls Our Future (Full Text)

The need for a collaborative approach to the UK Farming and Food Security Problem

UK Farming and food production is in crisis.

Latest figures suggest that the UK only produces around 52% of the food that we consume. Yet we are increasingly reliant on trading relationships threatened by war and the collapse of global supply chains, making the supply of imported food increasingly vulnerable and insecure.

Despite the risk to UK food security, Politicians and big business keep pushing UK Farms and Food Production towards profit making systems. This approach increases consumer reliance on unhealthy and highly processed foods and manufacturing, is quickly leading to the destruction of Agriculture and our ability to grow food naturally in the UK, and it uses organisations and standards like the Red Tractor scheme to exert ever more influence and control, knowing that significant change can be achieved without question, if the guidance comes from organisations that farmers and growers trust.

The short-, medium- and long-term future of UK farming and food production now hangs in the balance.

If UK Farmers don’t begin to take risks to save their own industry today; there will no longer be anything left of UK Farming worth taking a risk on in just a few tomorrows.

However, the risk taken to secure the future of UK Farming needs to be measured and considerate of all the ingredients necessary to secure permanent change, putting locally grown, healthy and nutritious food back at the centre of consumer and community life.

This cannot be achieved through populist protests and civil disruption that will damage the relationships that we now need to cement.

The creation of a new Food Chain Assurance Standard, led by Farmers, with the help of consumers and everyone who genuinely believes in and champions UK Food Production, offers the opportunity to achieve change that will not be possible in any other way.

This is 3FG.