Political opinion with John Milne MP: Food security in an unexpected way

There are now something approaching 1,200 food banks located across the UK, plus a large number of food distribution centres. This is a statistic for both congratulations and shame at the same time. It’s fantastic to see such a huge volunteer response - but we’d all wish it wasn’t necessary in the first place.

So it was with curiosity that I visited the London headquarters of the Felix charity last week, the UK’s largest food redistribution network. I’m grateful to the National Farmers Union (NFU) for arranging the visit as the final part of the NFU Fellowship, a course offered to all MPs to help them understand what makes the agricultural industry tick. Our previous visits were all to rural farms, so it was strange to end up in a warehouse in Deptford!

Felix supply fresh food to food banks across the country, including here in Horsham. But what I had not fully appreciated was the important role they play in national food security.

More than a third of UK food production goes to waste. This isn’t the fault of the supermarkets, who are incredibly efficient and already have strong redistribution networks for unsold goods. About half happens in the home. But now that food recycling has been rolled out by Horsham District, with over 1,000 tons of food waste collected as of August, most of what goes into our bins has a useful afterlife.

The challenge that remains is further up the supply chain and especially at the farm level. It’s impossible for farmers to calculate exactly how much they’re going to produce each year. To be sure of meeting their supply contracts, they usually over-produce. The cost of harvesting and transporting that surplus often exceeds any possible financial return, so it goes to anaerobic digesters or gets ploughed back in.

And this is where the great opportunity lies. If the government could give a little support to the industry, most of this surplus can be collected and put to good use. We lag behind almost everyone in Europe on this issue, because we missed out on an EU initiative after Brexit. Now’s the time to catch up.

Farmers don’t like to see their labour go to waste. But they need to at least have their costs covered, given how hard it is to make a living in agriculture right now.

Food redistribution at this scale isn’t just a moral good. It’s a major contribution to national food security.