Labour in government recognised the central importance of food to our economy and way of life. We set up a Cabinet Office enquiry into the food sector: Food 2030 was the first national plan for food since the second world war. We took action to improve supply chains and regulated markets to cut food waste. We understand that farmland has a wider role than simply in agricultural production. In particular, it has a role in water protection and in sustaining landscapes and habitats that are rich in biodiversity. But at times we were late to the debate in other areas.

We are now a quarter of the way into this parliament. The challenges for the food sector are clearer and more urgent than before, but the pace of action by this government has been too slow. Over the coming months, we will set out Labour’s new agenda for the food sector, to increase food production sustainably so that we can play our part in feeding a global population of nine billion people by 2050, while reducing the imprint which agriculture makes on the environment.

Our starting point must be valuing the natural environment. In stark contrast to its claim of being the greenest government ever, the Tory-led government is cutting £2bn from departmental expenditure on the natural environment over the period of the comprehensive spending review.

The UN Environmental Programme has established that loss of ecosystem services through deforestation and other degradation could result in an up to 25 per cent loss in global food production by 2050, with a consequential surge in levels of hunger and poverty. Labour is prepared to demonstrate renewed leadership on this issue as we did over climate change in the last decade.

In its report on the green economy, the OECD recommended a wider measure of economic progress beyond mere GDP, into areas such as clean air and water, and biodiversity. It concludes that, were developed countries to increase the issuance of green bonds beyond the combined current levels of $11bn per annum, hundreds of billions of dollars of new investment could drive growth in new and environmentally sustainable industries. As the Green Alliance established last week, the government has broken its pledge to introduce green ISAs which could help small investors provide capital towards new industries in the green sector. The Green Investment Bank will only have the borrowing powers it needs to support investment in green growth if the share of national debt as a proportion of GDP is falling by 2015. The weak state of the economy, with the government likely to miss its deficit and debt targets because of near-stagnant domestic demand puts that in even further danger.

Earlier this year, the government chief scientific adviser published the Foresight report which was commissioned by the last Labour government. It set out starkly the goals we must reach as a country. First, increase food production by as much as 70 per cent, particularly in the fruit and vegetables sector in Britain where we import a half and a third respectively of our annual total consumption. Second, cut the level of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture which have amounted to some 17 per cent of total UK emissions. Third, make better use of our decreasing natural capital of soil, energy and water.

Agriculture accounts for 14 per cent of global greenhouse emissions, and in 2006 the food supply chain was responsible for 160 million tonnes of CO-2 equivalent emissions: one-third came from primary production; a further third came from manufacturing, distribution and the sale of food; and a final third came from household food emissions and emissions embedded in imported food. Currently, under the low-carbon transition plan, agriculture in England has an emissions reduction target of three million tonnes by 2020.

While the Independent Committee on Climate Change endorsed current climate change programmes in the agricultural sector, it was clear that to meet the 2025 targets of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions, and the 2050 target of an 80 per cent reduction in emissions contained in the Fourth Carbon Budget a step change will be required and agriculture must be at the heart of this.

Agriculture also has a central role in driving global economic growth, food security and poverty reduction. According to the 2009 UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report, agricultural productivity growth has positive effects for the poor in three areas: lower prices for consumers; higher incomes for producers; and growth multiplier effects through the rest of the economy, as demand for other goods and services increases. It also establishes that agricultural growth reduces poverty more strongly than growth in other sectors.

Research published by the OECD has also found that the world has benefited greatly from productivity growth in agriculture, a substantial amount of which has been enabled by technological change resulting from public and private investments in agricultural research and development. The OECD has encouraged countries to increase their levels of investment in such research and development to at least 1.34 per cent of GDP per year.

At the G20 agriculture ministers’ summit in June, Caroline Spelman agreed to an increase in the amount which governments spend on food science to tackle food insecurity. Internationally, Oxfam are leading a campaign on resilience and equity in food supply chains.

That is why here in Britain, the cut of 26 per cent in Defra’s overall research and development budget over the period of this spending review is so damaging. The overlapping funds for promoting investment in food science and innovation makes progress slow and inhibits the development of new technology. Labour will consider carefully the arguments in favour of establishing a more streamlined funding mechanism on food science to more quickly match investment with innovation and new ideas.

But that poses a clear question: what policy changes must be made to ensure sustainable growth and tackle soaring food prices? We have seen the prices of basic foods on international markets reached their highest levels for 30 years back in 2008, threatening the food security of the poor worldwide. In 2007 and 2008, mainly because of high food prices, an additional 115 million people were pushed into chronic hunger. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the FAO this May that rising global food prices since last June have pushed a further 44 million people into extreme hunger.

The World Economic Forum in its 2011 report on Global Risks describes the water-food-energy nexus as one of the key drivers of future social and economic instability which must be overcome by policy makers. Earlier this year, food price inflation reached 6.9 per cent costing UK households an average of £260 extra per year on domestic food bills.

The International Food Policy Research Institute expects a 30 per cent increase in demand for water, and the International Energy Agency forecasts that the world economy will require at least 40 per cent more energy by 2030. It questions the sustainability of production of crops for first generation biofuels, were current levels of demand to be maintained, involving between 20 to 100 per cent of the total quantity of water currently used in global agriculture. A 2009 Chatham House report by Alex Evans established that half a billion people across the world face chronic shortfalls of water, likely to rise above four billion people by 2050, as a result of climate change, but also from unsustainable extraction from rivers, lakes and groundwater, leaving food production particularly exposed.

We have now reached a stage at which levels of food insecurity are at alarming levels in the Horn and East of Africa, and remain a concern in western Africa. In Africa as a whole, some 23 countries are in need of external assistance to feed their populations. The OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria spoke in early June at the Forum of the Americas of the imperative of increasing public and private sector agricultural investment and an end to export bans.

There is a debate currently raging among NGOs and economists about food price speculation and the contribution of commodity price speculation and trading in commodity derivatives to the volatility in global food prices since 2006. There is the predicted rise of 30 per cent in global food prices over the next decade estimated by the OECD and the FAO. There is evidence that the degree of speculation on food derivatives contracts by index funds increased between 2003 and 2007, and appreciably so in the first half of 2008, when global prices spiked by 25 per cent.

Oxfam and the World Development Movement are engaged in a campaign to regulate commodity speculation, along the principles set out in the Dodd-Frank legislation signed by President Obama in the US last March, of greater transparency in the trade in over the counter derivates, amounting to between 80-90 per cent of US commodity derivative sales worth in total $9tn per annum, done without proper regulation; and of regulation in terms of the value of the positions which individual or collective investors or financial institutions may hold. Five major financial institutions account for 96 per cent of the trade in commodity derivatives – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. Congress and the US Administration are in discussions about how to implement the Dodd-Frank commitments, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission consulting on new rules to reform regulation of derivative markets, including a limitation on proprietary trading and the size of positions within commodity markets which funds and financial institutions may hold.

Better Markets recently lobbied governments in Paris and London and MPs at Westminster on the need for concerted international action on commodity derivatives this year. They and others established the link between speculation from index funds and the monthly spike in commodity derivative stocks. Such speculation does not add liquidity to the futures markets or help farmers. Even the Treasury in Britain recognises a causal link between speculation and the surge in food prices, but it is currently a road block to global reform. That must change. Unregulated speculation leading to higher food prices is a threat to the geopolitical security of Africa, and presents a real challenge to living standards in the West too. That is why we must confront it, because for some people it literally is about life and death.

Labour will also champion freer and fairer trade as a means of lowering domestic food prices, and securing economic justice for the developing world. This would be best aided by a successful completion of the WTO Doha Round on trade liberalisation for the developing world, with the EU displaying stronger leadership on ending unjustifiable subsidies. Agriculture spending accounts for 41 per cent of the EU’s current financial perspective, or €55 billion a year. With pressures to lower the EU budget, agriculture cannot be immune from efficiencies, and a renewed focus on supporting innovation and research to promote greater food security will be required, in line with the communique from the G20 Agriculture Ministers at their summit in Paris in June. Eliminating trade-distorting subsidies is not simply about increasing growth; it is a matter of justice for the developing world, too.

Here at home, government can work with the industry to make a difference.

Labour’s plan for food will engage with horticultural farmers in the south and east of England to create new incentives for substantially increased production. We will listen to farmers in the west and north of England to improve dairy and cattle supply chains through a strong Grocery Code Adjudicator empowered to drive a fairer deal for producers from the major retailers, and championing more collective working. We are prepared to commit to the introduction of standardised dairy contracts if the voluntary approach does not generate results soon. We will consider expanding the use of anaerobic digestion to slash levels of food waste, which has reached £12bn per year. And we will support best practice in the farming community on establishing water reservoirs of farms, and more photovoltaic cells and medium-scale wind turbines where communities support them. We will listen and learn from where we went wrong in the past. We will listen because the countryside matters, and we are determined to see it thrive in the coming years.

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William Bain is shadow minister for food, agriculture and fisheries within the shadow Defra team, and Labour MP for Glasgow North-East and a contributor to ‘What Next for Labour? Ideas for a new generation’ edited by Tom Scholes-Fogg and Hisham Hamid.

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Photo: Amer Khalid