{"id":12687,"date":"2017-06-27T17:12:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T16:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=12687"},"modified":"2017-06-27T17:59:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T16:59:12","slug":"the-food-we-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=12687","title":{"rendered":"The food we eat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Politicians are being urged to develop a progressive food policy for England that includes improved labour rights in advance of leaving the EU.<\/p>\n

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A coalition of grassroots food and farming organisations today (June 27) launched \u00e2\u20ac\u015bA People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Food Policy<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, which they describe as a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bcomprehensive proposal for a more just and sustainable food system in England\u00e2\u20ac\u0165. Scotland is in the process of adopting national food policies and is currently developing a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bGood Food Nation Bill<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, while England has yet to make any progress.<\/p>\n

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The report outlines a vision of food and farming for post-Brexit England that is supported by more than 80 food and farming organisations. The report draws on 18 months of nation-wide consultations with grassroots organisations, NGOs, trade unions, community projects, small businesses and individuals.<\/p>\n

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Agriculture is one of the sectors that will be faced with the most uncertainty as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Rising food prices<\/a> is an issue that has already been repeatedly reported on in the context of Brexit, while migration restrictions are set to have an enormous impact<\/a> on the availability of workers in the agricultural sector.<\/p>\n

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In the face of this uncertainty, the report argues that a new food act is needed that, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bintegrates the compartmentalised policy realms of food production, health, labour rights, land use and planning, trade, the environment, democratic participation and community wellbeing\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

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‘Piecemeal’ approach<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Heidi Chow, food campaigner for Global Justice Now, part of the coalition that developed A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Food Policy, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bFrom the increasing corporate control of agriculture in the UK, to the price of basic food stuffs outstripping the rises in real wages, through to small farmers being aggressively squeezed out of the market, with over 33,000 small to medium farms closing down in the past decade \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the UK is witnessing a series of crises in how we produce, distribute and sell food. The government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approach to addressing these problems is at best piecemeal and at worst non-existent.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe new environment secretary Michael Gove commented last week that the UK can have both cheaper and higher quality food after Brexit. But the experience of many UK farmers and growers suggests that cheaper food prices must be paid for through lowering environmental and social standards across the farming sector.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bInstead we need to see greater regulation of the food retail sector to ensure farmers everywhere are paid a fair price for their produce.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

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Unite member and food security expert Dr Charlie Clutterbuck said reforming the legislation around farming subsidies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which are currently provided by the EU \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so the payments benefit working people rather than rich landowners, would help set English agriculture on the right course after Brexit.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe more land you own, the more money you are paid in subsidies. The Queen for example gets \u00c2\u01413m a year simply for owning land yet nothing is done with that land. In total the UK gets \u00c2\u01413bn in common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidies,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Clutterbuck said.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe government also raised the threshold of potential subsidy from five to\u00c2\u00a010 acres, ruling\u00c2\u00a0many community farms\u00c2\u00a0out of\u00c2\u00a0getting anything\u00c2\u00a0and enabling the top end to attract limitless subsidies.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Supporting\u00c2\u00a0labour \u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Clutterbuck explained that instead of paying the subsidies based on land, the payments should be\u00c2\u00a0linked to supporting labour.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis will allow farmers to employ and train young people on multi-skill apprenticeships.\u00c2\u00a0Instead of paying a few rich landowners \u00c2\u01413bn we could pay 300,000 people \u00c2\u014110k,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUltimately it is going to be impossible for the government to secure a Brexit deal that benefits everyone. So they will need to decide if they are going to support the consumers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who want to buy their food as cheaply as possible \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or the producers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who need to make a profit.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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The \u00e2\u20ac\u015bA People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Food Policy\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 report says that many countries in Europe and around the world have begun to adopt progressive frameworks like food sovereignty, agroecology and the inclusion of food rights into regional and national legislation to create \u00e2\u20ac\u015ba more stable and just\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 food system.<\/p>\n

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Tenant farmer and A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Food Policy coordinator Dee Butterly said the lack of a coherent, joined-up food policy framework in England is becoming increasingly problematic.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn this country we have shameful levels of food insecurity, with food bank usage rising year on year, and an estimated over eight million people now in a state of such financial precarity they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t afford to eat,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Butterfly said.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bJust last week, Unicef released a report \u00e2\u20ac\u015bBuilding the Future<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, with evidence that the UK has some of the highest levels of child hunger and deprivation among the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s richest nations, with one in five children under 15 years old currently food insecure.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicians are being urged to develop a progressive food policy for England that includes improved labour rights in advance of leaving the EU.   A coalition of grassroots food and farming organisations today (June 27) launched \u00e2\u20ac\u015bA People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Food Policy\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, which they describe as a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bcomprehensive proposal for a more just and sustainable food system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1810,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[486,758],"wps_subtitle":"Before Brexit \u00e2\u20ac\u0098people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s food policy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 call","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12688,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12687\/revisions\/12688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}