Ending Hunger by Anthony Warner

Author:Anthony Warner
Language: spa
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786079275
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

Beyond the Corn Laws

The Corn Law repeal eventually drove down food prices, encouraged imports from the Americas, and perhaps staved off a revolution in England. Once Irish bellies were full, they fought hard for vital land reforms that prevented the return of hardship. When blight hit again in 1879 it caused some hunger but few deaths, proving once and for all that it was not the blight that had killed so many, but human neglect and cruelty.

But what about the potential threat to national sovereignty from shifting the grain supply abroad? How was that issue ever resolved? The unsettling truth is that before and after the Corn Laws were repealed, Britain was not food secure, and still isn’t today. Since the eighteenth century, the UK has been unable to produce enough to feed its population adequately, and it currently imports around forty percent of all the food it consumes. Professor Ian Boyd is the Chief Scientific Officer at the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He told me:

We could probably provide all the food we need from within the UK, but it would support a very different diet from the one we enjoy now. We have relied on a global food system since the repeal of the Corn Laws, and nothing since then has suggested that this was not a good idea – except perhaps during WWII – even if some people are still arguing that we should go back to a pre-repeal system. The UK food economy is worth around £110 billion, and farming is only about 12% of the total. The rest is processing and the conversion of commodities – many of which are imported – into products with added value. There is nothing in that picture which suggests we should grow everything locally. Depending on the crop, it can be a lot more resource efficient to grow it elsewhere. The UK does not have an abundance of either high quality land or sunlight, both of which are needed for agriculture to thrive.

The idea that our continued sovereignty depends on our ability to feed ourselves is a myth, and a highly pervasive one. Through two world wars, Britain was vulnerable to starvation if the supply of foreign grain was cut off. It was not ‘digging for victory’ that kept Britain fed, but maintaining naval superiority. There was hardship, shortage, but never mass starvation.

As Ireland showed during its Great Famine, when agriculture focuses solely upon growing enough calories locally, it can create a dangerously precarious food system, prone to collapse and shortage. And as Britain has shown ever since, within a small and limited country, a diverse food supply linked to international trade is preferable, allowing us to specialise in the things we do well, and import what isn’t suited to our land.

Our bakeries have long been supplied with imported high-protein wheat, grown on the plains of North America and Ukraine. The majority of the picturesque wheat fields in eastern England produce a crop of such low quality that it is destined for animal feed.

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