An agricultural consultant warns there is not a “government on this planet” prepared for the potential disruption to food supply due to climate change.
Osla Jamwal-Fraser of SAC Consulting says bare supermarket shelves, such as those seen in Tesco last month following days of ferry cancellations, will become an even greater problem.
And she says a dramatic change in government policy is required to help support the sale of local produce.
Mrs Jamwal-Fraser says that, 10 years after the Brexit vote, government has failed to come up with a “proper, holistic approach” to what agricultural support will look like.
“We’ve had weather disruption and delays on the boats that they haven’t seen in 13 years. That’s going to become more and more common across the world,” she said.
“I would say that there’s not a government on this planet that is prepared for the disruption to supply chains that climate change is going to create.
“We spend a lot of time paying lip service to food sovereignty and food security – but what are we actually doing about it?
“Until they actually seriously start legislating the channels of distribution, and saying to supermarkets ‘you have to stock local…’ we’re not really going to change anything much.
“The government will not take concrete proper action until we have mass events of supermarket shelves across the country being empty.”
Citing the political debate in agriculture surrounding the inheritence tax, she said the general public had failed to understand why farmers were “making a carry on” about it.
“Your average Joe Bloggs doesn’t understand the disconnect between the value of the asset and the earning power of the asset in terms of agricultural land.
“We have a whole population deliberately trained to have no concept of what it takes to put food on their plate.”
She said that, while food inflation was going up, consumers were that “under production costs were being paid for the vast majority of our foods”.
“You don’t fix that by making food cheaper – you fix that by creating an economy which redistributes wealth.”
Her comments come after farmers and crofters sought help in navigating their way through the intense bureaucratic process of seeking agricultural support.
At the heart the process over recent years has been the Whole Farm Plan, which requires producers to have five key audits in place by 2028.
But concerns have been raised with the added requirement of enhanced greening measures, requiring farmers and crofters to take steps to offset any biodiversity or environmental harm through agricultural practices.
Exemptions had been in place, but have now been removed. Mrs Jamwal-Fraser said the move had left producers having to change their practices.
And she said signs were emerging that the added burden was putting producers off seeking some other support mechanisms available to them.
She highlighted a conversation she had had with a colleague at Thainstone, outside Aberdeen.
“We were speaking about the agricultural environment climate scheme applications, and he said he was curious because he wasn’t seeing a big number applying this year.
“To think about going into a new scheme, you have to have the headspace to think about that.
“I think folk are so fatigued with everything else that’s happening it’s really difficult for them to think about taking on an extra optional scheme that’s going to cost them quite a lot of money to apply for – with no guarantee that they’re going to get in.”
She added: “The government have really underestimated the time and energy and mental headspace it takes businesses to pivot all this, and it actually stops them doing the good stuff that they would otherwise be doing.”