Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Dr. Willie Soon – According to British MP Michael Gove, cheap food damages the environment and encourages poor people to overeat.

True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises, says commission

Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Tue 16 Jul 2019 06.00 BST

Radical change needed to make UK food and farming system sustainable within 10 years

The true cost of cheap, unhealthy food is a spiralling public health crisis and environmental destruction, according to a high-level commission. It said the UK’s food and farming system must be radically transformed and become sustainable within 10 years.

The commission’s report, which was welcomed by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, concluded that farmers must be enabled to shift from intensive farming to more organic and wildlife friendly production, raising livestock on grass and growing more nuts and pulses. It also said a National Nature Service should be created to give opportunities for young people to work in the countryside and, for example, tackle the climate crisis by planting trees or restoring peatlands.

“Our own health and the health of the land are inextricably intertwined [but] in the last 70 years, this relationship has been broken,” said the report, which was produced by leaders from farming, supermarket and food supply businesses, as well as health and environment groups, and involved conversations with thousands of rural inhabitants.

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“Farmers are extraordinarily adaptable,” said Sue Pritchard, director of the RSA commission and an organic farmer in Wales. “We have to live with change every single day of our lives.

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Gove said: “This report raises issues that are hugely important. We know that it is in the interests of farmers and landowners to move to a more sustainable model.” He added that the government’s agriculture bill would reward farmers with public money for public goods and a new “farm to fork” food review would look to ensure everyone had access to healthy British food.

The report was backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Green MP Caroline Lucas said: “This monumental report is a powerful and profound account of the ecological transformation of our food and farming system that we urgently need – and where we can start.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/16/true-cost-of-cheap-food-is-health-and-climate-crises-says-commission

I’m less than reassured by Gove’s promise that everyone will have enough to eat after he abolishes affordable food.

Green energy Britain has an atrocious record of helping people suffering fuel poverty. Occasionally even young people in Britain die because they missed a meal once too often to ensure their children are warm and have enough to eat.