Thread by @BenGoldsmith

British farming has overseen a catastrophic depletion of our soil, clean water, wildlife, and all of the nature on which we depend utterly. Some may kick and scream, but if we do not change course we will suffer food insecurity on a scale we have not yet seen./1

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1600177981028462592

Farming is regulated more lightly and subsidised more heavily than any other industry. By “red tape” @wheat_daddy means regulations which stand in the way of the worst excesses of modern farming, such as the dumping of slurry and other pollutants into the streams and rivers./2

British farmers operate in difficult and often unfair conditions. Food is structurally underpriced, imports are often subject to lesser standards and the supermarkets often abuse their cartel buying power. Hence a relentless drive to cut farm costs while increasing production. /3

Yet Britain is among the most food *secure* countries on Earth, growing 60-70% of our food (much of the rest we can’t grow here, bananas, avocados etc.) We’re so comfortable in our food security that from farm to fork we simply throw away almost half of all the food we produce./4

We’re so relaxed in our food security that we divert vast areas of our most productive farmland to growing food not for people but for machines (“bioenergy”) and for livestock miserably crammed inside industrial units - an outrageously inefficient use of calories./5

There is no shortage of food in Britain. On the contrary, we are capable of producing more food than we can eat. All that’s needed is a reduction in food waste and wiser use of our good farmland. In fact, we need a greater emphasis on quality over quantity./6

The greatest threats to our food security are the relentless, catastrophic loss of topsoil as a result of bad farming practices, turning our watercourses and the sea brown each year; the loss of wild bees and other vital pollinators; the collapse of our watersheds and so on./7

Taxpayers hand out more than £2 billion in financial assistance to farmers each year. Linking these payments to the stewardship and restoration of soil and nature while maintaining basic regulatory protections is not only reasonable, but essential to our food security./8

The recent gas and fertiliser price crisis has exposed the vulnerability of British farming. A key aim of the new Environmental Land Management scheme is to encourage farmers to reduce their reliance on (mostly imported) chemical inputs - a no brainer for our food security./9

In fact the false environment ‘versus’ food security narrative has strong parallels with the hard-fought notion that the cleverest response to a gas price crisis is to double down on, er, gas./10

Retrograde, self-interested voices demanding the slashing of basic regulations and the restoration of unconditional taxpayer handouts for farming ‘because food security’ are to be ignored. Food production in Britain needs the rethink which thankfully is now well underway./ End

@jordanbpeterson @1GarethWynJones @GBNEWS