In the UK, we produce just 46 per cent of the food we eat, while the rest comes from abroad. John Sheard is worried that this is leading to higher prices at the supermarkets as we compete with developing countries for imports

As the season approaches for festive stuffing of often unwanted and un-needed food, it is perhaps time, not of food for thought, but of thought for food. For make no mistake, the way this nation feeds itself is facing unprecedented change.

I am not just talking about the ever increasing cost of food in the supermarkets – which, thankfully in Craven are facing growing competition – but the very availability of the stuff. For thanks to years of confusion over the role of British farming, we grow less than half of what we eat and the countries that supply us with the other half are being tempted away.

The reason for that is the huge growth of well-to-do consumers in the Far East who once lived on a diet heavy in rice, vegetables and fish now demand – and can afford – the fat of the land: ie meat, particularly beef and lamb, and dairy products like butter and cheese.

One of the sadder experiences in my epicurean life – I was for several years restaurant critic of a magazine group – took place in Singapore, which has the most diverse eating-out scene of anywhere I have ever been.

My wife and I were strolling down Orchard Road, the city state’s main drag, pondering whether to have top quality French cuisine at our hotel or a help-yourself Chinese in a hawkers’ bazaar, when we came across a huge queue of young, excited, chattering Chinese.

Curious, we were dumfounded when we reached the head of the queue to find... a McDonald’s burger bar.

It was the first to be opened in the land of chilli crab and ice cold Tiger beer and these youngsters couldn’t wait to gorge on fried, fatty beef and Coca Cola.

That was some ten years ago and, no doubt, Singapore is awash with burger bars as is Moscow and – may the Good Lord Help us – Paris, which even has one on the Champs Elysees. The French, however, can produce their own beef but Singapore and the millions in China cannot.

So where is all this meat coming from? Much of it is from Australia and, where lamb is concerned, New Zealand, who since the building of the first refrigerated merchant ships have been feeding what they used to call the Mother Country for a century or more.

China, India and even up-and-coming Indonesia, not to mention Japan and South Korea, are all adopting Western diets.

For the Aussies and the Kiwis, these are much closer, bringing down shipping costs and offering a future of almost incalculable market growth. And what happens if the farmers in both North and South America start looking across the Pacific rather than the Atlantic?

So where does this leave us Brits, whose once proud pound has taken a hammering since the banks nearly went bust five years ago, pushing up the cost of imports even higher? And why is it that we only produce, according to the last figures I read, just 46 per cent of the food we eat?

Much of this is down to Government indifference in the past 20 years or so.

Tony Blair, it was reported, asked why we should pay our farmers a fortune when it was much cheaper to import our food.

He didn’t realise this would lead to one of his more embarrassing moments as Prime Minister, when he was famously slow-handclapped by the annual conference of the Womens’ Institute.

By the look on his face that day, he couldn’t understand what he had done wrong.

Since then, food security on these islands has been put even further at risk by the dash for alternative fuel sources which has caused huge tracts of North and South America to be turned over to cash crops that can be turned into so-called “green bio-fuel”.

This effect may be ameliorated now that fracking has reduced US energy costs by two thirds but will that ever happen here? And what effect on our native food supplies will covering thousands of acres of good agricultural land with solar panels in the mad, subsidy-driven rush for “green electricity.” Or building hundreds of thousands of houses in the green belt?

I ask these questions because very few other people – particularly those in power – don’t seem to be doing so.

It is as though putting food on the table is a matter of minor, peripheral policy compared to the crucial issues of gay marriage and high-speed railways.

But to hazard a guess, I suspect in the very near future, we will be eating more genetically modified GM food – which are already in all soya products imported from the USA – less meat and more veg, which health-wise is no bad thing.

In the meantime, Christmas is coming and the geese (or turkeys) are getting fat.

Enjoy... while you can.

* The opinions in this column are John’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Craven Herald