Sandys calls for action to combat food price rises
As consumers across the country are finding the cost of food is increasing, it is time the Government takes action to address food insecurity. In her adjournment debate on Tuesday 5th July, Sandys will ask the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Jim Paice MP, to put in place a more coherent set of policies to cope with food inflation and food insecurity.
Food security and food price inflation has hardly ever been debated in the House of Commons.It is high time we grappled with the complexities of this issue as there is nothing that impacts our constituents more than the prices in our local shops shelves.Food inflation lies at the heart of political and economic instability internationally we must not let it destabilise our ambition for growth in this country.
Sandys will call for UK food security policy to include:
Greater domestic production – to hedge the growing instability in the world markets. We import over 50% of our food and with growing trend of protectionism, population growth and climatic shocks this level of dependency on international markets is far too high.
An assessment of food poverty this is growing and will have serious health, nutritional and educational impacts.
A real strategy to deal with food waste this country wastes 30% of the food that it produces and, similar to the Green Deal addressing energy waste, we need a joint Government initiative to deal with food waste from the field through to the wheelie bin.
Increased investment and priority for agronomy, food technologies, food production as part of our growth agenda. Food production is a business of the future and needs to be given greater focus.