It’s coming up fast to harvest time, so farmer is concerned that yields may not be as good as he would like given last year’s very difficult conditions.
On a global scale, we no longer have butter, wheat and sugar mountains, and given that this year’s harvest in most of the grain producing countries of the world is guessed to be at least a third down, on average, do we have enough food to feed the world or, specifically, do we have enough food to feed the United Kingdom?
Will producing “meat” using stem cells help? Will it have as much iron as red meat or maybe that doesn’t matter any more? In future will our cattle be slaughtered so that our beef burgers and mince come from stem cells? But our steaks, where will they come from?
If stem cell beef burgers hit the supermarket shelves will they contain the right nutrients and how will they be priced? (Who will benefit?)
Food banks trouble me in my day-to-day job. I work in Stamford and I work with many who are less privileged than most, and many of my families are now totally dependent on the food that they get from food banks. Is this ethical?
While farmer finds his sleep disturbed by the weather, I worry about our food production and our ability to feed people appropriately.
P.S. In my last article I raised the issue of what to do with slugs. I now have the answer: we sell them as pre-shelled snails! (Thanks Mike).