Download the Soil Association report here.

The food and farming sector is not pulling its weight when it comes to tacking climate change and food shortages could be the consequence if we fail to make fundamental changes to the way we farm, process, distribute and eat our food over the next 20 years, a new Soil Association report has warned.

Meanwhile, another report out today – this one from Friends of the Earth and Compassion in World Farming, which also recommends a radical change change in the way with think about food production – warns that feeding the world in a more ‘planet-friendly’ way will leave little room to grow bio-fuel crops for cars.

The Soil Association’s report – ‘Food Futures: Strategies For Resilient Food And Farming’ – calls for a new cross-Governmental joined-up approach to food strategy which means changing what we eat as well as the way food is grown, processed and distributed.

“We’ve got to make fundamental changes to food and farming if we’re going to meet the Government-agreed climate target of a cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 80 per cent by 2050 and reduce the £6 billion burden on the NHS from diet-related illness,” said the Soil Association’s policy director, Peter Melchett:

“We need a joined-up strategy that links changes in diet to changes in our food systems. We can’t make plans for what people might eat in future in a different box to how that food is produced.”

In particular, the Soil Association wants the Government to be much tougher on the agricultural sector when it comes to tacking climate change, raising the target for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from six per cent to at least 20 per cent by 2020, in line with other sectors.

It also wants to see the minimisation of soil carbon losses made a condition of the Common Agricultural Policy subsidy payments.

On the other hand, it wants bigger payments for farmers who maximise carbon storage in the soil and calls for research and development funding for sustainable farming to be substantially increased.

As part of its joined-up approach, it wants public sector caterers to be encouraged to use more unprocessed, locally-sourced and organic food. Local authorities, it says, should re-introduce ‘growing belts’ and market gardens close to urban centres – and create more allotments to foster ‘grow your own’ initiatives.

The Soil Association also calls for the promotion of healthier diets, based on a more sustainable food system. This would involve less meat and much more seasonal and organic vegetables, fruit, wholegrains and starchy carbohydrates – with red meat and dairy reared on grass preferable to intensive pork and poultry reared on grain.

The Friends of the Earth and Compassion in World Farming report – ‘Eating The Planet?’ – similarly falls short of recommending a vegetarian diet.

In fact, research conducted for the report, modeling future food production against different diets, farming methods and land use, concluded that eating meat no more than three times a week would allow forests to remain untouched, animals to be farmed in free-range conditions and greener farming methods to be used.

But feeding the world in this way would mean that there would be little room to grow bio-fuel crops for cars. Feeding people must come first, the report says.

Clare Oxborrow, senior food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "It's amazing news that we can feed a rapidly expanding population without trashing the planet – and still eat meat several times a week [...]

"The Government has already backed a major scientific study that calls for a move away from intensive production – it's time it stopped spending public money on it and got behind planet-friendly farming instead."

Tomorrow the Soil Association hosts a major international conference on the future of food. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) world summit on food security takes place in Rome next week.

Greenwisebusiness.co.uk 11/11/09