Horticultural Sector

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for securing this debate and introducing it in an informative and lively way. I join the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, in regretting that we do not see more Members of your Lordships’ House in this debate. Perhaps if I point out that there were excellent briefings from the Wildlife Trusts, Buglife and NFU, that might encourage a few more to engage next time.

I had cause this morning to be reminded that on 1 November I will have an Oral Question on the importance of philosophical education at all levels of education for critical thinking. Had the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, not secured this debate, I would have been tempted to do something similar for food growing because while this question focuses on the importance of education for careers, I assert that in this age of shocks, with resilience needing to be uppermost in Government’s mind, everyone in our society being able to grow their own food—food security at its most personal and basic level—is a crucial skill. This would truly be education for life not just exams.

I say that as someone who has an agricultural science degree—admittedly I specialised in animal husbandry—but it was only in my 40s that I grew some of my own food and learned all sorts of useful things, such as that brassicaceae and slugs really do not go together and that if you put beer traps in a garden with a Staffordshire bull terrier who loves beer, it does not work out very well either.

This is not just a food security issue. It is also an issue of public health. In 2018, only 28% of adults were eating the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. The average was 3.7 portions and only 18% of children aged five to 15 ate five standard portions of fruit and vegetables per day. Horticulture is a public health issue. Indeed, this is recognised in the National Food Strategy, which has a target of a 30% increase in fruit and vegetable consumption in the UK by 2032, but that raises a key question. Where are these fruit and vegetable crops going to come from?

One aspect that has not yet been touched on is the potential for urban horticulture, which is largely overlooked in the national food strategy. However, it was historically important. In the UK during the “Dig for Victory” campaign, 18% of fruit and vegetables that the population ate were grown domestically in allotments and gardens. With more than 84% of the population in the UK now living in cities and towns, this is an area we need to look at, and that requires education. A study in Sheffield, admittedly a very green city, showed that if domestic gardens and potential and existing sites for allotments and community gardens were utilised, Sheffield could be 122% self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit.

Education does not necessarily have to be in a formal context. I credit the organisation Incredible Edible with having done an enormous amount. There are now more than 100 groups in the UK and many around the world educating people in food growing through informal elements. But when we are talking about education for commercial growing, I want to focus, too, on the excellent work done by the Kindling Trust in Manchester. Its figures and those from the Royal Horticultural Society show that the number of applicants for work-based training programmes have reached the highest numbers in decades. There is a huge demand from people who want to get into horticulture, but many of them, rather than simply seeking a job in horticulture, want to set up their own small businesses or join a co-operative with a small number of like-minded people to produce vegetables and fruit. Doing that requires one crucial thing—access to land. Access to land to be able to start those small businesses for people to develop those skills is a huge, pressing issue that desperately needs to be addressed.

We need to think about the human resources. We have long been stuck on the idea of finding people jobs, but that thinking is being turned around in all sectors. Earlier today in your Lordships’ House, we were talking about the shortage of people for the social care sector. The human resources of time, energy and talent are scarce resources and we need to use them well, and horticulture is a space where we can do that. Maybe we need a large-scale training programme to convert financial sector workers into fruit and vegetable growers. That would be a good use of human resources in an age where we have so much danger from our financial sector.

The UK is only 18% self-sufficient in fruit and 55% self-sufficient in fresh vegetables. The vegetable figure has declined 16 percentage points over the past two decades. We must ask ourselves what right we have to rely on other people’s scarce water supplies to produce our fruit and vegetables in ways that may destroy other people’s soils and involve human rights abuses and abusive labour conditions. There is a huge responsibility for us to take the kind of actions that the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, outlined. The Food Foundation calculated that if everyone in the UK ate five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, we would be 2.1 million tonnes annually short of the supplies that we need for the UK. Yet as work from Sheffield shows, it is perfectly possible to grow enough vegetables and fruit here in the UK: we have simply not devoted the land or human resources to doing that.

I thank the noble Baroness for stressing the environmental aspects of horticulture, as well as the need for skills and education. Buglife’s briefing focuses particularly on the risk of invasive, non-native species and risk of the trade in pot plants. We tend to focus on fruit and vegetables in horticulture, but growing trees for the reforestation that we need and even growing the plants that enliven our homes and public spaces is crucial. We currently import £1 billion-worth of live plants and planting materials. That is not only a lost economic opportunity for the UK; it presents an enormous threat in terms of imported diseases and species. Buglife notes that the invasion of non-native flatworms risks reducing local earthworm populations by 20%. People knowing about these things and replacing our supply systems from overseas with local systems are crucial.

Peat is an area of absolutely crucial environmental concern in terms of both climate and nature. We need to look at education, research and development to ensure that we end all use of peat in horticulture. The endless foot-dragging on the peat sales ban is an enormous government failure of this past decade. As an example of the positive alternatives, Dalefoot Composts takes 100% of its inputs from the Lake District, including bracken, sheep’s wool and comfrey. This is an agroecological approach to producing inputs for our horticultural sector. This is the kind of innovation, technology change and social innovation that we need, and it requires input of not just physical resources but human resources—time, energy and talents.

Finally, I also note the importance of real development in paludiculture. Even if we leave the soil sitting there on the peatlands, we must not allow them to dry out. We can be growing different fruits and vegetables—a diversity of crops—on those lands if we put the human resources in.