“Hidden underground in rural Sussex is the world’s largest collection of seeds from wild plants. The Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) is home to over 2.4 billion seeds, representing over 39,000 different species of the world’s storable seeds. This is the most diverse wild plant species genetic resource on Earth – a global insurance policy to store and conserve seeds from common, rare or endangered useful plants. Seeds are largely collected by global partners as part of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, as well as during field work led by Kew scientists”. https://www.kew.org/science/collections-and-resources/research-facilities/millennium-seed-bank
Having enough food to eat is a necessity for life, and a human right.
The right to adequate food is realised when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement. – General Comment 12 (Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, CESCR, 1999).
Yet looking around the world this is not the case. For many people food security is not a reality. Why?
1. Food insecurity can arise because a person cannot afford to buy sufficient food – this might be in absolute terms of calories or in the equally important terms of sufficiently healthy food needed to avoid malnutrition. The issue is not a lack of food, but the lack of money to buy it.
It is an even more widespread problem across the world where 40% of people cannot afford a healthy diet.
Pay-related food insecurity can be a particular problem in urban areas. In rural areas it is possible that people will have access to land such that they can grow their own food. This is often referred to as subsistence farming as it does not necessarily produce additional income to spend on other things.
“The world’s smallholder farmers produce about a third of the world’s food according to detailed new research [June 2021] by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares, operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 35 percent of the world’s food” – https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/
Whilst for many people, subsistence farming does ensure they have food to eat, it can be a precarious existence. In Kenya smallholder farmers are being forced to buy commercial seed which then needs both fertilisers and pesticides to ensure a good harvest. Previously these farmers would collect and swop seeds from their own crops, but this has been made illegal as the Kenyan Government tries to ensure that all seeds are certified.
2. Food insecurity can arise because of a failure of one or more harvests. This particularly affects poor countries who struggle to pay the cost of importing food to make up local losses, and subsistence farmers who may not have the capacity to grow and store food to cover more than one year’s needs.
Food security is particularly sensitive to climate change. Climate change is increasing the frequency of both droughts and heavy – destructive – rainfall, raising temperatures and increasing the frequency and intensity of winds, all of which are potentially damaging for crops and for livestock.
Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are now facing the sixth consecutive year of drought conditions. Hunger is widespread: an estimated 43,000 people died last year in Somalia as a consequence of an inadequate diet. The affects of failed harvests has been accentuated by the rising cost of food that could potentially be imported.
On a far smaller scale, shoppers in the UK have been faced with shortages of cauliflowers, tomatoes and salad ingredients. In part this has been because farmers in the UK and the Netherlands have cut back on the amount of crops grown under glass because of rising energy costs, plus sharp frosts which damaged brassica crops, and in part because of unseasonal cold weather in southern Europe and North Africa damaging crops grown there. Last summer’s drought across Europe led to many harvests being reduced by 30% and which has been felt by consumers in the form of higher prices for risotto rice, olive oil durum wheat pasta.
3. Food insecurity may arise because the farmers cannot afford to grow the usual amounts of food. Whilst consumers need enough money to buy food, producers need to earn enough to cover there expenses. The last 18 months have seen soaring costs for energy (baby chicks for example need to be kept at a temperature of 30C), fertilisers, and for basic labour. Many farmers in the UK are tied into contracts with supermarkets with fixed prices, making it hard for them to over their costs. Equally as rising costs are not always reflected in rising prices because of supermarket competition, many farmers are reducing the amount of crops their will grow for the coming season. It is better financially not to grow the crop than to grow it and then sell at a loss.
4. Distribution systems can also affect food security. We have seen this recently with exports from Ukraine. Without access to the Black Sea ports, there was no effective way of shipping grain from the Ukraine to countries such as Egypt, where it was most needed. Delays in the distribution system may mean that food perished before it reaches its market. Partly due to distribution issues, but also mismatches in the supply chain between what the supermarkets order and what the consumers buy, as much as 17% of the world’s food production goes to waste.
5. Global food security would be greatly enhanced if meat production was reduced.
“Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories … This means that what we eat is more important than how much we eat in determining the amount of land required to produce our food.” https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets
Eating less meat and using the land instead to grow food for direct human consumption would provide the food needed for the world’s growing population (subject to affordability and distribution issues).
“The UK is 30 to 40 years away from “the fundamental eradication of soil fertility” in parts of the country, the environment secretary Michael Gove has warned.“We have encouraged a type of farming which has damaged the earth …. If you have heavy machines churning the soil and impacting it, if you drench it in chemicals that improve yields but in the long term undercut the future fertility of that soil, you can increase yields year on year but ultimately you really are cutting the ground away from beneath your own feet. Farmers know that.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/24/uk-30-40-years-away-eradication-soil-fertility-warns-michael-gove?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
7. Food security can be potentially threatened by diseases – whether diseases that affect crops or diseases that affect livestock. Recently in the UK we have seen the impact of avian flu on supplies of chicken and egg. Whilst in the Mediterranean the Xylella pathogens is infecting olive trees across the region – it can also infect similar plants such as cherry, almond and plum trees. It was first discovered in olives trees in Puglia in 2013. The spread of the disease have been devastating, with an estimated 60% decline in crop yields in Italy since the first discovery in 2013. The world food supply is particularly vulnerable to the affects of disease because our food supply is dominated by a very limited number of species. Of the 6,000 different plant species used as food, only nine (sugarcane, wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, sugar beet, cassava, oil palm and soybean) contribute 66% of total crop production. Increasing the diversity of plants we grow and eat as food is essential. It is also equally essential that we safeguard our food security by improving biodiversity as a whole for the ecosystem is highly interconnected.
“Biodiversity for food and agriculture is all the plants and animals – wild and domesticated – that provide food, feed, fuel and fibre. It is also the myriad of organisms that support food production through ecosystem services – called “associated biodiversity”. This includes all the plants, animals and micro-organisms (such as insects, bats, birds, mangroves, corals, seagrasses, earthworms, soil-dwelling fungi and bacteria) that keep soils fertile, pollinate plants, purify water and air, keep fish and trees healthy, and fight crop and livestock pests and diseases…Less biodiversity means that plants and animals are more vulnerable to pests and diseases. Compounded by our reliance on fewer and fewer species to feed ourselves, the increasing loss of biodiversity for food and agriculture puts food security and nutrition at risk,” added Graziano da Silva.” https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1180463/icode/
“The Heritage Grain Trust … [is] developing a new approach to growing grain for human consumption, one that encourages resilience in the face of climate change and reduces the loss of biodiversity that occurs with intensive grain production. We believe that a genuine grain revolution is required in arable farming based on the growing of genetically-diverse populations of heritage cereals using agro-ecological methods. We believe that British farmers can produce all the grain needed to feed the UK by growing heritage grains in ways that improve soil health, increase biodiversity, and sequester climate-destroying greenhouse gasses.” https://www.heritagegraintrust.org/about-us
Seek out heritage grains and flour to add variety to your diet and to promote biodiversity. Try https://hodmedods.co.uk/
“ Haweswater’s wildlife is … being given the chance to make a full-throated comeback, thanks to interventions made by the RSPB, in collaboration with its landlords, the water company United Utilities. The project partners have reduced sheep numbers by 90%, from more than 3,000 two decades ago to about 300 today. They have also planted more than 100,000 trees, restored 400 hectares (988 acres) of peatbog, and “rewiggled” a valley bottom stream so it can reoccupy its natural flood plain. Webb resists the idea that Haweswater is a “rewilding” project, however. “It’s still a working farm,” says Webb of the site’s two farmsteads in the valleys of Naddle and Swindale. “We’re just doing it less intensively.”” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/10/haweswater-project-lake-district-rewilding-farming-jobs
The Guardian today reports ‘UK droughts already threaten disastrous breeding year for frogs….Fortunately, wildlife groups and suburban gardeners are increasingly aware of the declining populations of frogs, newts and toads and are providing new habitats – the most important being our garden ponds.’
Support campaigns for restoring rivers. Allowing rivers to follow their natural course rather than being dredged and straightened helps control flooding and provides a more secure habitat for river wildlife. Cleaning rivers of physical pollutants also helps prevent or limits the affects of flooding – wind blown and carelessly discarded plastic and other rubbish can block inlets and outlets and be a death trap for river wildlife. Cleaning rivers of chemical pollutants enables rivers once more to become vibrant places of biodiversity as well as becoming safe places to bathe!
Clean and biodiverse-rich rivers are rewarding places to spend leisure time and we are increasingly aware of the health benefits of blue spaces. What’s not to like?
Delegates at the Biodiversity COP are working to define what it is to be ‘nature positive’. I would hope it means a default of working with rather than against the natural environment wherever possible. One of the Guardian correspondents commented that little is being said about how we as individuals can be ‘nature positive’, adding “Dietary changes, for example, is one of the most significant things people reading this could do to reduce their impact on biodiversity, namely cutting meat consumption.”
The Wildlife Trust notes ‘Orchards are areas of trees and shrubs planted for food, usually fruit. They are an historic habitat; many species of fruit tree were brought over by the Romans and cultivating fruit trees might date back to the Neolithic period. Not only are orchards useful and beautiful, they can also be important for wildlife. They are perfect for pollinators, and fruit trees age quickly which creates essential deadwood habitats.’
Preserving orchards is an important way of maintaining the UK’s biodiversity. Many orchards are under threat partly because the lack of people to pick the fruit and partly because of the propensity of supermarkets to stock imported fruit – so equally that may suggest we as consumers need to ensure we seek out UK grown produce.
‘You are the Lord, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you.’ Nehemiah 9:6
Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. Colossians 1:15-16
Creator God, forgive us
when we have failed to love all that you create;
when we do not treat creation with respect.;
when we have sought to impose our will – and not yours.
As we wait for the coming of your Son,
help us to show him honour by honouring creation,
to show him care by caring for creation,
and to show him love by loving creation.
Amen.
As the world’s leaders focus on the importance of biodiversity, may we all seek to understand better the importance of biodiversity and the role it plays in our daily lives.
The whale that keeps on giving
The wide vast oceans,
tropical balm and arctic chill,
teem with living things
great and small
And here dwells the whale –
God’s tiller of the sea –
formed to frolic in its deeps
and traverse its lengths.
From an infinitesimal nil
to 200 tonnes of mammalian flesh,
its life spans a century full.
A life of daily gorging and expurgating 10,
nay, 20 tonnes of krill
replenishes the seas with iron,
and spins once more
the phytoplankton’s oxygen giving,
carbon absorbing wheel.
From the depths the whale
redistributes food,
sustaining small fry
that dare not dive so deep.
Migrating between distant poles
and warmer summer seas,
the whale spreads the bounty
of each mouthful it digests
and spins once more
the global food chain’s thread.
Under the whale’s ocean watch,
krill and plankton multiply,
and so God’s worker feeds
5000 mouths and more.
Its leviathan frame
a maritime conveyor belt
of sequestered carbon
that gracefully sweeps the seas
till finally at whale fall
it sinks to rest –
a carbon store
for evermore
upon the ocean bed.
The Lord’s Prayer.
NB Over the last century whale numbers have declined by an average of 64% of which the worst losses have been of blue whales, down by 99%. Scientists are experimenting with reinvigorating the biodiversity of the oceans by the application of artificial whale poo.
The Green Tau 