Yet another food strategy was launched by the government last week without much coverage. Hounslow Green Party has not been particularly active in campaigning about food. However, I have spent quite a bit of time at the national level examining policies which overlap with our local food choices in the context of wider environmental outcomes that we want for the country and the world.
In particular, wider Green Party policies do encourage us all to consume far less meat and dairy, more fruit and vegetables and less foods with high levels of sugar, salt and fat. These are very likely to have beneficial outcomes for both the environment, our own health and our household costs. Further to this there is also strong evidence to encourage reduction of consumption of foods that are flown into this country and ultra processed foods. Foods with less packaging are also to be encouraged.
We can all take action in the borough of Hounslow, every day to move in this direction.
Zooming out to the national level, there have been great environmental successes in the UK in some sectors such as cleaning up electricity generation and waste. There are good ways forwards for other sectors such as homes, with heat pumps and transport with electric vehicles.
But there has been very little progress with environmental improvements in the agriculture / food sector. Agriculture greenhouse gas emissions are dominated by methane and nitrous oxide from animals, particularly cattle and sheep. It is not going to be possible to make progress in making major reductions in environmental impacts in this sector without considerably reducing this part of agriculture in the UK. And that means less consumption by us, as well as less production by farmers.
We must not just replace meat and dairy production in the UK with imported products – which are often even more damaging to the environment than production in the UK.
Another environmental impact from the agriculture sector is pollution of our rivers and coastal waters with excess nitrates and phosphates running off farmland. This excess can cause algal blooms which then affect the whole ecosystem. The UK has some very ambitious targets for reducing this harm. But it has far from adequate policies to achieve the targets. The Office of Environmental Protection points out how much livestock numbers need to be cut to meet the targets.
The Hounslow Green Party have campaigned for “good” water quality in the Thames and the River Brent. It is useful to understand that achieving water quality targets is related indirectly to what we eat.
We want to find a way in the UK, and where we import our food from, to have more space for nature. We are constrained as to what we can do about this locally by planting trees and opening up green spaces. By reducing what meat and dairy we consume, we can collectively reduce the land required for food production in the UK and for our imports.
Tony Firkins
21 July 2025