Monitoring Supply Chain to Build Resilience
The Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon has written to the Prime Minister calling for detail of the announcements made by the UK Government this week on food security.
These included funding announcements made in a public letter to farmers earlier this week, and following the UK Government’s recent Farm to Fork summit. Scottish Ministers were not invited to the summit.
The Affairs Secretary has said it is vital that the Scottish Government receives more information “to gauge the sufficiency, extent and implications of those announcements for the sector, and to understand how these apply to Scottish agri-food producers and those of the other devolved governments”.
It comes after the Scottish Government announced its own new dedicated Food Security Unit, focussed on ensuring Scotland’s food security by monitoring the supply chain for possible disruption.
Its establishment was a key recommendation of the Short-life Food Security and Supply Taskforce, set up by the Scottish Government together with industry immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The new Food Security Unit will take forward the legacy activity of the taskforce. It will monitor food system resilience and engage widely so that government and industry are able to react as quickly as possible to any future shocks.
This week in Holyrood saw a Scottish Government debate on Securing a Sustainable Food Supply for Scotland, which saw reiteration of the point that Scotland has only a fraction of the powers, levers and funding required to do that.
I welcome the Scottish Government’s establishment of a new Food Security Unit, but also the Rural Affairs Secretary’s intervention in writing to the Prime Minister.
GRAEME
She has written to Defra Ministers repeatedly about the range of issues impacting on the sector here in Angus and across Scotland, but has not received any meaningful engagement with UK Ministers to date.
The UK Government has been late in waking up to the importance of food security as an issue, and must now clarify its plans and work constructively with the devolved administrations.
If the funding announcements represent new money then Scotland would clearly want to see its fair share, though it is not clear that what has been announced will go far enough to mitigate the pressures on the sector.
In the recent past we’ve seen several significant events impacting our food and drink sector, including Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and, crucially – the UK Government’s choice to pursue a hard Brexit, which took us out of the EU and the Single Market. On top of this there has been further disruption to supply chains resulting from climate volatility, something that we are likely to see more of in the future.
RURAL AFFAIRS SECRETARY, MAIRI GOUGEON
I want to ensure we are able to anticipate and adapt to shocks as much as possible, while we develop policies to try to mitigate them and reduce their likelihood. While it is not possible to predict all impacts, our new dedicated Food Security Unit will enable better long-term insight into global supply chain performance – helping us to improve our responsiveness to potential crises.
Our farmers and crofters are essential to Scotland’s food security and I am committed to supporting our nation’s producers, in the short term, by maintaining direct payments, and in the long term through our new Agriculture Bill and reform programme.
