By Colin McLean

 

Creating a new food policy brings big risks; everyone has a view on exactly what should be done.

It is a bold move by the Scottish Government to legislate for major change. The Good Food Nation legislation could have huge implications for diet, wellbeing, sustainability and fairness. It reflects a vision for healthy sustainable local food, with agriculture and good food policy at the heart of Scotland’s economic transformation. Can all this be delivered?

Scotland’s problems include the proportion of the population that is overweight or obese, and the role that snacks and discretionary foods play in providing the nation’s calories and fat.

There is little debate that these factors are linked to health, but that does not bring out the underlying elements involved including poverty and inequalities. Many lack the money and support to make healthy choices. Reform is needed, with new purpose put into creating a fair and sustainable food system.

Ambition must now turn into action; Scotland needs change and not just strategies. Despite Scotland’s long heritage in quality food and drink, food choice is strongly linked to inequalities and some poor health outcomes.

The solutions are broad-ranging, covering all who serve and sell food. The plan has been years in the making – the original national food and drink policy was published in 2014, setting out a vision for 2025. Since then Brexit has disrupted planning, and the pandemic delayed the legislation.

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The new law is essentially enabling, leaving a multiplicity of organisations and agencies to fill in the blanks. What is needed is a clear sense of priorities, recognising limited resources and the time it will take for local authorities to develop their responses.

Local authorities and other public bodies must now publish their own plans to implement the new legislation. Debate is needed on the main outcomes, policies and indicators of progress, but that should not delay us for long. Connections must be made between the different agencies and coalitions involved in food in Scotland, and learnings brought in from local initiatives around the country.

All this will run alongside the Just Transition Plan for land and agriculture, better pay and conditions in the food industry, and an urgent need to tackle food poverty.

It will take resolve to develop and maintain new ways of working that involve so many parts of a complex system. Success would be generational change, but initially there may be little hard evidence of progress. Achieving this in a period of inflation and budget constraints would be unprecedented.

Not foreseen when the new legislation was prepared was this year’s drive for food security. War in Ukraine has brought urgency to achieve self-sufficiency and a circular economy, but with a setback in the form of a huge rise in farming costs.

Quadrupled prices for fertiliser and some other key supplies have already seen many farmers switch some fields to beans, economising on fertiliser. Rape seed has increased to substitute for the now scarce and expensive sunflower oil. It shows how long-term planning must adapt to global pressures. Turmoil in world food markets is not the best backdrop to starting a new policy.

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Scotland’s new plan comes at the same time as the publication of a government food strategy for England. There is much overlap, but overall England looks less ambitious.

It is much harder to see what types of partnerships they plan to tackle the problems. England’s proposed Food Council looks more traditional and political in thinking, in contrast with the Scottish Food Coalition’s alliance including workers and academics alongside farmers and growers. The proposed Food Commission in Scotland must not be yet another addition to a multiplicity of bodies, but foster links between all the agencies involved.

A recognised Scottish food mark is planned but will involve collecting data on traceability and sustainability that is verifiable across the whole chain. Some of the investment envisaged could be transformative. Good food in schools, and early years in particular, could do much to tackle food poverty and inequalities. In time, it could bring material health benefits.

Driving change to food production and diet cannot simply be by persuasion. Carrot and stick are likely to be involved in changing behaviour, but taxation can be a blunt and unfair policy tool. Taxes on sugar and salt, for example, are likely to be regressive, hitting hardest those who can least afford change.

Other methods may be more effective; Scotland led the way with its smoking ban which was effective in reducing tobacco use without unfair financial bias. Minimum alcohol pricing has shown yet another lever, but it is still too early to assess the result.

These learnings should be carried over to food policy. Already envisaged are some controls on food promotion, which will take skill to avoid unfair implementation. It would be wrong to focus solely on tackling individual foods as “bad”, rather than overall diet. Scotland has now the opportunity to use its local authorities, public bodies, schools and hospitals to drive policy through their own practices and procurement.

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Already it is suggested that large companies will need to accept public funding conditional on food and sustainability policies. Inevitably this will increase supplier costs, and it is hard to see that this would not be passed on to the public bodies. Pushing the private sector to change is complex, and could have unforeseen consequences.

Nevertheless, public sector leadership is possibly the easiest area for early wins. A concerted effort to connect food procurement and delivery with healthy eating and sustainability might achieve change in years rather than decades. The challenge will be to do this while budgets are under pressure.

Making food policy work will take investment, time and a joined-up vision. A whole-system approach is needed to recognise the connections between agriculture, food and sustainability.

It is seen as a growth sector within Scotland’s economic strategy, but change will involve investing in food and drink education and development of new standards. Developing food policy has taken years – it is important now to minimise delay in implementation.

Colin McLean is managing director of SVM Asset Management.