Tim Lang is Professor Emeritus of Food Policy at City University of London’s Centre for Food Policy which he founded and directed from 1994 to 2016. Hill farming in Lancashire UK in the 1970s formed his interest in the relationship between food, health, environment, culture and political economy. He was policy lead on the 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission proposing the planetary diet. His most recent book Feeding Britain (Pelican pb, Feb 2021) explores the UK as a case study of a rich country’s food system going awry. He proposes that the best route to food security is to put sustainability, health and social justice at its heart.
Do you think the pandemic has created opportunities to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable food system?
It should do but will it? On a worldwide scale, the pandemic has had varied impacts on food security. It’s perhaps still too early to tell what the long-term impacts of Covid-19 are. In the Western part of the world, the pandemic appears to have actually accelerated concentration of power, because the hospitality sector (the largest employer in the food system in the rich world) was mostly closed down. The food and drink market in the rich world was handed over to big retailers and to home delivery. The disruption to primary producers has been terrible. Culturally, the pandemic has seriously changed social life. The already burgeoning delivery companies seized their chance too. Yet again, food power has again been leveraged away from primary producers. The owners of electronic, software based platforms triumph. And a new global sector has massively consolidated its food system power. We see major regional concentration underway. In China, groups such as Ele.me and Meituan Waimai are rivals; in the USA it’s Uber and Amazon; in Europe, Uber-Eats, GrubHub, Deliveroo and Just Eat Takeaway. This is a sector which didn’t exist 20 years ago! A new gig economy spot. The consequences for food system dynamics are considerable. Here is something for geographers to grapple with and take seriously! Where is consumer spending ending up?
A lot of talk now is about the use of technology within food sustainability, such as producing meat alternatives. What are your thoughts on the role of technology in the transition towards a more sustainable food system? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about this?
Technology has always reshaped agri-food, from the steel plough on. On modern food technology generally, I’m sober, neither optimistic or pessimistic. We know that 21st century food systems are in trouble and that the world must wake up to the huge impacts on public health, urban-rural relations, and the political economy. These are major challenges more visible over the past forty years and the result of earlier policy choices. But it would be crazy to say technology is the answer to all these food problems. Technology might help and cannot be dismissed. It can help resolve some impacts dumped onto ecosystems but cannot resolve them alone. People must also change behaviour. Political structures, pricing, and policy direction must also change. Technical fixes may appear appealing but they often ignored what frames the problem in the first place.
Take the case of alternative meats. There’s a commercial rush into alternative meats with big money flowing into new niche factory-made food markets. What are they for? Another product line on over-full supermarket product shelves? Whether these are cloned, substitutes, or plant-based look-alikes, they often are maintaining the ‘meatification’ culture. It’s the same as saying that artificial sweeteners resolve the problem of sugar being bad for health. If meat equivalents keep taste-buds liking meat, they actually reinforce the cultural norm that meat-is-good. Meat could and should be exceptional; feast-day food not everyday food, perhaps. It is essential that the world reverses the steady rise in cattle, and cuts grain being fed to cattle, and gets a grip of land use. We must change the perception that meat has to be the centre of the plate. Ultimately, ‘meatification’ (an ugly word, I know!) is a cultural challenge. If plant-based meats chip away at that, well, they might have a place. The evidence clearly suggest that plant-based diets are the way to go.
Consumers now have so many factors to consider when making decisions about what and how to eat sustainably. What is a sustainable diet?
Good question! If we look back at the origins of the concept of sustainability, the 1987 UN Brundtland report defined sustainable development as the interplay between society, economy and environment. I don’t think that three-way approach is adequate today or certainly not for food systems. In my last report as Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission, we proposed a six-heading approach to sustainability and food. Food sustainability is the juxtaposition of: food quality, health, environment, economy, socio-cultural values and importantly, governance. They should not be traded off against each other but given joint attention. Pamela Mason and I used that 6 headings approach in our 2017 “Sustainable Diets” book.
We shouldn’t be surprised that consumers are confused about sustainable eating. There is next to no advice about it. It’s the elephant in the food policy room. For the past forty years, there has been a big push to promote healthier diets, and big fights to get the nutrition content of food items declared on the packet – the weakest form of intervention, incidentally. Many countries have national nutrient-based dietary guidelines now. In the UK, the Eatwell guide recommends how people should eat, specifically instructing the public not to eat too much red or processed meats, after the national body did a study with the Carbon Trust on dietary greenhouse gas emissions. It was an important but limited first step. I’m arguing that we need clearer and broader advice than that. Consumers need cultural advice. In World War 2, consumers got such advice about nutrition and eating because food was scarce. Today, we should see the climate and obesity crises as urgent reasons to help shift consumers towards sustainable diets.
Many studies show that if the overconsuming, developed world adopted a more plant-based and healthy diet, its environmental footprint would improve. Thus, the argument goes, we only need to encourage people to eat more healthily; then the environmental impacts would improve without trumpeting doom and gloom about climate. I disagree with this argument. Sustainability is more than just CO2e (greenhouse gases). We also need to address issues such as biodiversity and other planetary boundaries. And sustainability is also a matter of social dynamics. A rich society like the UK feels comfortable using others to feed it, not making full use of its own land. This is mostly a failure of the labour market and farm support. Sustainable diets require us perhaps to take issues such as seasonality and sourcing more seriously. Where’s this food from? Are the workers paid well? Are we paying the real costs? I love mangoes and papayas – a childhood partly in India – but they are flown into the UK with a lot of embedded carbon. Am I paying the full price? Hmm. Should I never eat them or only on ‘feast days’ as special treats?
Governments are nervous about entering into this zone. It’s easier to leave the sustainability of diet to market forces and to consumer choice. But they are not even doing enough to shift production. The food system’s juggernaut seems to roll on. True, there’s more discussion about the need to change, but not fast enough or at scale. Food’s impact cannot be brushed off. It’s too big, too important. The real elephant in the policy room is us, the affluent world’s consumer. I hope a working party on sustainable diets I am to chair will help outline the range of initiatives we must now explore if society is to help consumers in their daily food choices. There’s much at stake. The rich world must eat differently not just for ecosystems health but as a political urgency.
Written by: Belinda Ng
Image: Unsplash
DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF COMPASS MAGAZINE AS A WHOLE OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY.