Green Food Project gets mixed response from environmental bodies

DEFRA’s Green Food Project has been published with mixed response coming from environmental bodies.

The report has set out to find a feasible way to a sustainable environment, and the general consensus is that it is an encouraging first step towards achieving this. However, environmental bodies such as the World Wildlife Federation have warned that the government needs to show more leadership to fix the ‘broken’ food system.

Tackling sustainability in relation to food has been touted as one of the biggest challenges on the hands of environment ministers at the moment. There certainly is no denying that action is required, and this was reflected in the government's own 2011 Foresight report on the future of food and farming, which highlighted the urgent need to redesign the food system.

The Foresight report also highlighted the damage on our natural world as well as the health problems that have arisen because of under regulated farming practices. Health problems such as obesity and heart disease are on the up, costing the NHS billions of pounds.

A WWF article described ramping up food production as a "fool'd errand", saying: "the question is not how much food the UK should produce - it's not our role to feed the world - but how we address the underlying problems of our food system such as waste, access and diets."

Mark Driscoll, head of WWF's food team, added: "We support the collaborative approach taken by the Green Food Project as a - very small - first step. But what’s really important is the need to take action so we move towards a more equitable and sustainable food system which addresses the twin global challenges of sustainability and hunger."

This is why the Green Food Project has so much weight on its shoulders. It must take a ambitious, radical and innovative approach to the current sustainability problems, rather than replicating existing initiatives that clearly fall short of providing the impetus needed for change.

Posted by Joseph Hutton