UK would run out of food today

I think it is important to note that food waste is only a shocking modern reality in certain countries and economies. I never saw much food waste in the informal settlements in South Africa.

What I meant to add earlier is that thanks to the Soil Association's rules and regulations, my sister in law could not get her small business supplying fresh eggs locally off the ground. She couldn't afford to feed the hens on the regulation food to achieve the accreditation, plus (I think) she would have been required to pay a fee to the SA to get their stamp of approval. And the eggs from her happy hens were truly fabulous and delicious.

Sorry, granjura, I have just read what I wrote and it sounds like it's all directed at you. It isn't, of course, just the first sentence.

I agree with the fact that it is important to ask the big questions rosequartz, but I also think that this is an issue where everyone had to take responsibility and do what they can. Grow your own (however small your capacity), eat well (and organic when you can), avoid processed food, make time to freeze leftovers (no such thing as time only priorities), buy locally, eat real food. If everyone did that the supermarkets, farmers and the food industry would have to respond.

When you get an organic vegbox, you expect them to be ugly, granjura.
The word organic does not belong to the Soil Association. However, if someone sells food as organic and trading standards test it and find it isn't, they are in trouble. There needs to be a standard, whether you like it or not.
Organic food has been tested by Newcastle University and found to be higher in vitamins and antioxidants than other foods, so much so that you get an increased benefit of two fruit and veg if you eat organic.
If organic food is not labelled as such, how do I know I am not getting GM, which is important to me?
I speak as someone who ran an organic cafe and an organic guest house.
If there was no accepted label I would not have been able to do it.

Perhaps if we didn't waste so much food- something like 50%- we could perhaps feed ourselves- and use less meat and fish too. Food waste is a truly shocking modern reality- and 2 for 1 bogof offers make it much worse- as people are too busy to organise the cooking and freezing necessary for most without large families.

Intermarché in France has also started a fabulous new range 'ugly fruit and veg' - 'fruits et légumes moches' - where people can buy a cheaper range of fruit and veg which are perfectly good but mis-shaped, etc. Hurrah.

annaries I agree with feetle and I'm not enamoured of the Soil Association. My sister-in-law who has free range chickens that certainly ate organically, couldn't say they were "organic" because she couldn't obtain SA registration.

I wonder what my grandpa whose free range chickens and eggs were so sought after years before the Soil Association even existed would have made of that.

Sometimes there are just too many rules and regulations.

We had a glut of beetroot recently. I went to the local chi-chi new cafe and offered them our "organically grown beetroot" from an "award winning local allotment" (my husband's guerrilla garden that he got an award for on the local Happy List - so the only award was that it made people happy). I was delighted when they said "yes please" and next time I was passing, called me in and gave us a gift of the beetroot and chocolate muffins that were made from the donated beetroot. Now that's what I call outsourcing , not to mention community spirit and promotion of general health and wellbeing.

Yes, Annaries, so much waste of food. It is an environmental disaster in itself.

Good to see that Michael Eavis is putting the solar panels on barn roofs, not taking up vast fields of agricultural land as some farmers are being encouraged to do.

Just for you, grumppa, to show you why I do not think the label organic is silly.
www.soilassociation.org/whatisorganic/organicfood
That's not right in East Anglia, merlot. I thought that anaerobic digesters could use waste from food production. That makes much more sense.
I wonder what happens to all the out-of-date food that gets wasted from supermarkets.

There are two links; one from the meat site but it is about farming generally, not just about meat, and amount of food that we import.

The other is a link from a national newspaper pointing out that, if we did not import much of our food and relied solely on home-produced food, 7th August is the date in the year when we would run out of food in the UK.

When I say 'home-produced' I mean produced by British farmers in Britain, not Gnetters doing their very best in their own plots which of course is wonderful, but not what the majority of the population is doing in their mainly small gardens/window boxes etc.

What I was trying to ask was:

Should we be producing more of the food we consume in Great Britain actually in Great Britain bearing in mind our population is growing as well?
Should we give more support to our fishermen too?
Should farmers be encouraged to produce more food instead of installing solar panels, wind farms etc on their land, or selling off their land for more housing?
Should we be putting a stop to the proposed encroachment on to green belt land and start looking at more brownfield sites instead for building more homes?
Should the large building firms, supermarkets and other organisations who are holding on to land be forced to release it for housing, thus negating the need to turn productive agricultural land into housing estates and new towns?
Is the proportion of food we import a good balance, or something which has grown too much over the years because we have not taken enough care of our agricultural and fishing industries?

I was just asking some questions to which people better informed than me may have some answers.

Well yes, all food is organic. But I'm quite sure you know what Annaries meant- so no need for the sarcasm, surely.

Annaries I totally agree about the importance of eating food un-adulterated by pesticides, antibiotics, and more. We all know the effect those pesticides and other chemicals are having on bees and other wildlife, and of course, us.
Much prefer eating less meat, and less food- of higher quality.

And of course there is the issues of decent husbandry and treatment of animals, including short and humane transport and slaughter.

Thousands of acres around here are also being taken up with growing maize for anaerobic digesters.

I can see why you are worried about solar farms, merlot, living in East Anglia. I think Michael Eavis has got it right, at Glastonbury.
www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/solar-so-good-at-worthy-farm/

Come on, feetle, you surely know what organic means. That's a ridiculous statement. I prefer to eat food that has not been adulterated with hundreds of chemicals. Is that more acceptable?
Grannya, I think you and your husband are exceptions. By way of interest, how much land do you have, and how many people does it feed?
I notice that you say that someone else has the pigs on his smallholding, so the land is not your own. Do you pay cash, or do you barter?
Buying locally sourced fish does not count, as someone else does it for you and you pay. No different to going to a local fishmonger. So you do not really grow your own; you pay somneone else to do it for you. The problem is that not many people in this country can do it, unless we reduce the population quite dramatically. Maybe the Ebola virus will do it for us, or e.coli., etc.

Hear, hear, feetle.

Nobody eats INorganic food, do they? 'Organic' is a rather silly label.

Mamie I store potatoes the same way as you do in an outside cool room and then mash and freeze them when they start to sprout. They freeze very well when mashed.
As for growing meat and fish Annaries - yes we do have our own. We buy a piglet or two each year and a friend keeps them on his smallholding and we pay him to feed them for us until they're butchered (he plays football with them too). We also get a deer once a year that my husband skins and butchers. We live by the sea and either catch or buy locally sourced fish; usually mackerel with a few pollock and very occasionally sea bass. We get duck eggs from my daughter and hen's eggs from a friend.
Now if only I could grow a spaghetti tree and start a rice paddy I would never need to buy food elsewhere at all.

Hundreds of acres of good arable land are being covered with solar panels which produce no food whatsoever.

Solar farms could be sited where the land is poor but arable farmers are being paid around £400 per acre per year with no costs involved.

I eat organic food.
Nowadays farmers are paid to put hedgerows back in for the diversity of wildlife. The problem is with both the farmers and the supermarkets. Because of its financial problems, the Co-op has just had to sell off its farms, which is a shame.
Are you a contributor to Practical Action as well, Mamie?

Good point Annaries. We have chickens too and eat them and their eggs. But I accept we are privileged here to have the space to do that, and to be able to be partially self sufficient. We eat beef and lamb only about 10 times a year, and I can't say enjoy the beef - the lamb - yum!
The UK has only limited space, and a population which has a big demand for pig and cow meat, which isn't really an essential part of the human diet.
All I can think of is a massive educational programme to wean people off this type of food.

Not all farming land is suited to growing vegetables though. I have family who are sheep farmers in mid-Wales. They grow a few vegetables for themselves, but they couldn't make a living. Without the sheep the uplands would quickly be overgrown and the area would lose the population to the towns.
I loathe factory farms with a passion and am not keen on huge vegetable and arable farms that grub up hedgerows and use chemicals to enhance the crop either.
Grow your own, support local producers, grow and eat organic where you can. I don't think the problem is with the farmers really. It is the power of the supermarkets, the hideous "food industry" and the insatiable demand for cheap food.
Small is beautiful.

By the way, I looked up vegetarian on the NFU website. It got two mentions. One was to tell vegetarians not to apply.

But you are in France, Mamie, and have a much greater mix of vegetables to grow than in Britain.
It is about meat, because if we buy and eat less meat, the farmers will put more land to producing vegetables, so we will be self-sufficient for longer. Farmers do not want us to grow our own, they want us to buy what they have grown. This is self-sufficiency on a national not individual scale.

I don't think the link is just about meat. There is a link to the meat site, but everything I read here and have read elsewhere is about all kinds of food.
My nearest neighbours live a subsistence existence which includes nettles and dandelion leaves, they keep chickens and have rabbits. The chickens are used for eggs until they are too old, then boiled for the pot. Many people here hunt and river fish in season. They drink cider and calvados. This is the way they have lived since the revolution (and before without the hunting). They are living off the land and their use of the world's resources is pretty minimal. I would never be sentimental about their life it because it is hard, but I am full of admiration for them and it has made me think very hard about how much we consume.

Do you all grow your own meat and fish as well? The link was about meat.