japan announced

[sodthisforfun]

That's true, the UK can't grow enough, nor the variety. But it all helps. Buy what we can locally, when it's in season and stop chucking so much of it away.

The last thing we can control easily, but it's hard to buy local produce when places like tesco would rather stock things like tomatoes & cucumber that are grown in those large greenhouses in Holland, even in the summer when the UK could grow them easily. I do hate supermarket chains!

 

[JP_]

The last time the UK ( although it didn't exist as an entity then) was self sufficient in food, the population level remained pretty constant for a long time, approx 1 million people only.

That cannot be right. UK produces 48-61% (depending on source) of its own food, and the population is 70 million, so that is food for 35 million people. Currently 69% of the country is farmed, there is potential for more intensive farming in many areas though.

Food production has been increasing, and we certainly have the capacity to produce more food, we just need to make farming a more viable business again - many farms stopped because they struggled to make money.

One problem though - the average age of a UK farm manager is 59 - if Brexit turns out to be as problematic as some believe, we need more farmers and more farmland.

of course, many farmers have converted agricultural land to biofuels, or organic farming, to meet growing needs and improve profits. This will no doubt change if there is renewed demand for British food, ie. supermarkets will to pay a fair price rather than import.

Professor Tim Lang says we can feed ourselves:

“Yes, but it depends on what we eat,” says Professor Tim Lang. “We’ll have to cut eating meat down to once a week. We have to rebuild our horticulture and put more money into primary food production. There has to be a shift in how we grow our food.” https://www.countryfile.com/news/can-the-uk-feed-itself-after-brexit/


Seem to have digressed again.
Maybe we'll soon be sending our fishing boats out further to catch some whales!

 

[EddieM]

That cannot be right. UK produces 48-61% (depending on source) of its own food, and the population is 70 million, so that is food for 35 million people. Currently 69% of the country is farmed, there is potential for more intensive farming in many areas though.

Food production has been increasing, and we certainly have the capacity to produce more food, we just need to make farming a more viable business again - many farms stopped because they struggled to make money.

One problem though - the average age of a UK farm manager is 59 - if Brexit turns out to be as problematic as some believe, we need more farmers and more farmland.

of course, many farmers have converted agricultural land to biofuels, or organic farming, to meet growing needs and improve profits. This will no doubt change if there is renewed demand for British food, ie. supermarkets will to pay a fair price rather than import.

Professor Tim Lang says we can feed ourselves:

“Yes, but it depends on what we eat,” says Professor Tim Lang. “We’ll have to cut eating meat down to once a week. We have to rebuild our horticulture and put more money into primary food production. There has to be a shift in how we grow our food.” https://www.countryfile.com/news/can-the-uk-feed-itself-after-brexit/


Seem to have digressed again.
Maybe we'll soon be sending our fishing boats out further to catch some whales!

Not all year, we have a short growing season. Ok so mechanisation will up the quantity, but it can't change the seasons, we'd still starve, as we used to, without imports

 

[ellal]

You really must try to read beyond the first article you Google, on a calorie by calorie basis, that may be true, but as the calorie equivalent of 1 rasher of bacon has the same calorific content as about 23 servings of lettuce, your argument is somewhat spurious.

Probably why a few posts back I said...

Beef production is of course the worst example, but growing many vegetables produce as much greenhouse gas emissions as other forms of meat in a like for like calorie comparison...

You should actually read the posts before simply repeating something that has already been stated

In addition, food loss (as opposed to food waste) is much higher in fruit and veg than animal loss because it is more weather dependent...
And when we get on to food waste, then fresh fruit and veg again tend to have the highest rates - because they are perishable.
Thus given loss/waste rates of up to 40%, more has to be grown and thus putting out more greenhouse gas emissions.

 

[ellal]

Food production has been increasing, and we certainly have the capacity to produce more food, we just need to make farming a more viable business again - many farms stopped because they struggled to make money.

One problem though - the average age of a UK farm manager is 59 - if Brexit turns out to be as problematic as some believe, we need more farmers and more farmland.

of course, many farmers have converted agricultural land to biofuels, or organic farming, to meet growing needs and improve profits. This will no doubt change if there is renewed demand for British food, ie. supermarkets will to pay a fair price rather than import.

Not only will we have to import more, but some of it will probably come from further afield due to those wonderous easy deals we'll be doing...

And in the age of permanent austerity/brexit, supermarkets won't be able raise prices and we'll be increasingly buying food from sources that is of lower quality and with less rigid animal welfare controls...

But if we were to suddenly manage to start farming more in the UK, who will be around to work on those farms and pick the crops?