How poor diet costs the UK £98bn annually

It is the leading cause of avoidable harm and is becoming more expensive year on year. If a government were looking to fill a financial black hole, our diets may be the place to start.

That figure and quote from Tom Pearson, a farmer and medical doctor, is the one I remember most clearly from the twenty three presentations at last week’s UK Nuffield Farming conference in Belfast. Another scholar Hannah Fraser, also a GP and farmer, presented on how farming practices can improve nutrient density in the food we produce.

Food. That most important of basic needs. The reason we all do what we do. The reason we ask the public and politicians to value us, our families and our businesses.

Food is something I think about a lot. Mostly because I like eating nice food (as my extra few kilos will attest to) and because I associate it so much with how I feel. A week of poor diet, too many heavy carbs and not enough vegetables often leaves me with a cold, feeling run down, flabby and lethargic. My solution is usually a pot of kale soup, plenty of eggs, milk and quality meat. Unprocessed wholefoods, with high levels of macro and micro nutrients.

I am fortunate to have the education and money to be able to buy and cook good food, though will confess that I sat watching the rugby over the weekend, fuelled by shop bought pizza, crisps and beer, adding to the coffers of the 11 companies who own most of the food we consume.

As I listened to Tom and Hannah talk about food as medicine, better government procurement and shorter supply chains, it seemed so obvious that a change in our diets could have a dramatic and positive impact on society. And farmers should be at the heart of this movement.

It was great to see the boxes of nutritional food the farmers rallying in London delivered to a local food bank, creating that direct link between food and farming. If we have the ear of the public now, let them know that we can be part of the solution. £98bn is not a number easily ignored.

Perhaps an over simplistic solution, but surely taxing poor quality processed foods which usually come with excess packaging, then using these taxes to subsidise nutritious food so it is affordable for all, would be a good place to start. When it is cheaper to buy a pizza than a head of broccoli, is it any wonder we have such poor health.

Part of this discussion also needs to be the real issue of food insecurity. Whilst it has often been touted as a reason to support farmers in the past, the current world situation does put us at real risk.

A key theme I took from the conference was that all sectors are competing for limited resources to supply an ever growing and demanding world population. Despite farmers becoming so much more efficient at producing more food using less, the march of deforestation and desertification continues. The elephant in the room as ever remains the question of how many people is too many people?

These are big picture topics. They will not be solved by me writing about them in the pages of TSF. But they came on the back of my own recent ponderings. I’ve been thinking a lot about the health of our animals, crops and soils lately. It hasn’t been a lightbulb moment, but a gradual dawning of comprehension which leads me to look at our farming systems differently.

Most farms, from hill to low-ground, have some pretty hefty vet, med and agronomy bills. Drenches, pour-ons, trace elements, vaccines, insecticides, pesticides, fertilisers, the list goes on. I’m now starting to see many of these interventions are a crutch or sticking plaster for compromised systems.

In the same way the NHS is compensating for our poor diets, is our reliance on treatments covering for damaged farming systems?

Vet and farmer Claire Whittle also presented and she was quite clear that many of our current ‘solutions’ were not solutions at all but short term fixes contributing to further problems whilst lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical corporations.

I’m aware this all sounds very regen and hippy, but for me this is about productivity and profit (and a reminder that one doesn’t necessarily equal the other). Are many of our animal and crop management tasks avoidable through different management?

I should be clear that we definitely use some of these crutches. Modern science and medicine are invaluable and good animal welfare and food security cannot be sacrificed for ideology.

However, we do always ask ourselves what do we really need to use and what are the impacts of not using it? This approach has resulted in a dramatic reduction in product use and the subsequent labour requirement. Most of our ewes haven’t been wormed for several years and mineral use is low and targeted. We don’t vaccinate calves for pneumonia or worm cows and other medicine use is down. We’ve stopped buying fertiliser as didn’t feel the return on investment added up for grass.

The ability to make these changes has mostly been achieved through selection and nutritional/grazing management. Though I’m conscious a proper whole farm plan that included the integration of more trees, hedges and other species would probably bring further gains.

If we’re asking the government not to think in silos of health, education and economics, then surely we need to look at our own farms more holistically.

Change is difficult. On a small farm taking even a metre wide strip out of production is hard. In arable farming, planting rows of trees down the middle of fields is unthinkable. But what if that habitat meant you didn’t need to spray so often? The problem here is of course risk. Doing A, B and C usually gives us a fairly predictable outcome. Taking out B may mean C isn’t even an option because we have nothing left to treat. Managing this risk is the challenge farmers face.

Starting a new week, I’ve been reflecting on the conference. The problem with listening to so many really good speakers, who have spent two years investigating a particular topic, is that I’m unable to take in all the detail.

The presentations are always fascinating and wide ranging. From fully automated parsnip processing to insect farming, consumer engagement, team management, forestry, hen health, potato costs, berry harvesting, biochar, cut flowers, manure management, rewilding, on farm energy and much more.

The videos will be up on YouTube soon and I’m proud to say the Scottish scholars did us proud, they are well worth some of your time.