The Geographer: Good Food Nation (Summer 2018)

The

Geographer SUMMER 2018

The newsletter of

the Royal Scottish Geographical Society

Building a Good Food Nation Diet, Distribution and Other Dilemmas “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Michael Pollan

•S olar Impulse Medal Night • Rights and Costs of Food • Food Diversity, Security & Poverty • Slow Food & Sustainable Soils • Clydeforth & Coastal Carbon • Obesity, Time, Tax & Joined-Up Eating • Reader Offer: The Third Plate

plus news, books, and more…

The

Geographer

food”

M

any years ago I spent a couple of months on an expedition with Raleigh International, exploring the depths of the South-East Asian rainforest in Borneo, climbing mountains, building the ubiquitous bridge, and providing basic medical and construction aid.

Battling leeches and extreme humidity, there was fairly quickly only one single topic of conversation. Food. We were constantly hungry, and all we thought about, talked about and dreamed about was food. In one instance the medic in our team nearly stabbed a venturer over a sachet of ketchup.

This experience taught me never to take food for granted, as it is so easy to do in our modern western world, where supermarkets stock all sorts of wonderful produce from all over the world and in any season.

It took an unusual event –the heavy snowfall in March – to bring this home again. Shops seemed to almost instantly run out of milk, bread and, rather tellingly perhaps, tonic. Every bread-type product was simply swept off the shelf by desperate shoppers, and people were reduced to buying flour (to make their own). It did remind me how potentially fragile our food system can be.

The announcement was received positively, despite its wide ambition to join up thinking across very broad sectors and concerns, and if successful it could produce a fundamental shift in our relationship with food in this country. In this edition of The Geographer, with the help of Nourish Scotland and members of the Scottish Food Commission, along with some highly-regarded national and international voices on food, we explore the key issues and aspirations of such legislation. Despite Scotland’s evident export success, there are plenty of issues to be tackled, from the growing call on food banks, and increasing food poverty, to the obesity crisis, low farm incomes and wages, climate change and nitrogen, education, pesticides, genetic and environmental sustainability, and land use. This ambitious consultation will be welcome when it comes, but it will challenge many sectors to work collaboratively in a way that will break the normal mould. And geography can play a central role in helping resolve these conflicting pressures and hopefully help to produce a Good Food Nation.

Mike Robinson, Chief Executive RSGS, Lord John Murray House, 15-19 North Port, Perth, PH1 5LU tel: 01738 455050 email: enquiries@rsgs.org www.rsgs.org Charity registered in Scotland no SC015599 The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the RSGS. Cover image: Scottish Larder. © Liv Wan Illustration Masthead image: Solar Impulse. © Niels Ackerman

RSGS: a better way to see the world

In our Young Geographer project, running from late 2015 to 2017 with generous funding from The Gannochy Trust and The Hugh Fraser Foundation, we supported a group of young people through the multi-stage process of creating a professional magazine, from initial concept and content sourcing to final design and production, and encompassing lessons in project planning and cooperative working. We then arranged Two members of the first Young Geographer Editorial Team with RSGS Shackleton Medallist for the editorial team to present the Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who chaired the UN finished magazine, The Future We Climate Change Conference in Peru in 2014.

Want, to national and international politicians, policy-makers and key influencers at a series of special events.

be part of it

The project proved so successful and popular with a range of audiences that we are now making plans to run a follow-up project. If you would like to be involved in the new project, or to help us by making a donation or offering opportunities for the young people to gain useful learning experiences, please contact us at RSGS HQ.

Hugh’s Fat Fight Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has already taken on unsustainable fishing and food waste. Now, with more than 60% of the British population overweight, the chef and food campaigner has set his sights on obesity. In a new BBC series, Britain’s Fat Fight, Hugh has been tackling a range of obesity-related issues, from food education and sugar to advertising and lifestyle. And one of his campaigns, to encourage Nestlé to use colour-coded traffic-light food labelling in the UK instead of monochrome, has already catalysed proposed changes to the company’s policy.

food

Food is of course an issue that affects us all; indeed, I have at least one member of staff who measures every experience in food. So when the Scottish Government announced their intention to consult on a Good Food Nation Bill, what were they hoping to achieve?

That “people from every walk of life take pride, pleasure and benefit from the food that they buy, serve and eat day by day,” the Cabinet Secretary Fergus Ewing MSP told parliament. And it would touch “health, food standards, waste, social justice, agriculture, education and procurement.”

The Young Geographer II

Tony Simpson FRSGS Margaret Wilkes, RSGS Collections Team In February, with the swift, unexpected death of Tony Simpson (a member of our Collections Team from early 2011), the Society lost someone possessed of boundless enthusiasm, great creativity and unforgettable exuberance. After a wide-ranging career in Ordnance Survey as a surveyor, in retirement Tony was a godsend to the Society with his knowledge and experience of map-making and surveying equipment and his skill in photographing artefacts. On public occasions Tony was memorable, holding forth with gusto to visitors on particular items in the collections. This gusto was manifest again in moving collections into new storage in 2014. His great artistry saw him carve two replica sets of wooden snow goggles (used by early-20th century explorers in Polar Regions) as a gift to the Society, and showed when with a few deft tweaks he transformed our special displays of collections items. For his multitudinous endeavour he was awarded the Society’s Honorary Fellowship shortly before he passed away.

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SUMMER 2018

Shackleton mystery: solved!

Crossing the Empty Quarter In late April, we hosted the official opening of our latest exhibition, which details the recent crossing of the largest sand desert in the world, the Rub’ al Khali or Empty Quarter, by explorer Mark Evans MBE, Executive Director of Outward Bound Oman. This scorching trek, which took 49 days, was inspired by desert pioneer and RSGS Livingstone Medallist Bertram Thomas, the first man to complete a successful crossing of this arid and beautiful landscape, in 1931. During the occasion, we were delighted to confer a prestigious Honorary Fellowship on Mark, for his work in exploration and his commitment to youth engagement and outdoor education.

After consulting various Pitman shorthand experts and enthusiasts, we’ve come to an understanding of the notes written at the bottom of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s CV, a document recently rediscovered in our archives, which had been prepared by the polar explorer in 1903 to support his (successful) application to become Director of the RSGS. Scribbled in light pencil, we believe the five lines of notes were probably jotted during Shackleton’s interview and translate as follows: member very popular in geographical circles in London later completed long course training designed for navigation we probably all share his enthusiasm for next Antarctic visit considerable experience as a journalist down south [Antarctic] various relevant certificates

To cut the exhibition’s opening ribbon, we were honoured to have in attendance Mr Taeeb Alim Al Alawi, Deputy Head of Mission at the Omani Embassy. Alongside Mr Alawi, we also welcomed Bryony Dillon, a student from Perth College UHI who, with support from the RSGS, secured a place on last year’s Connecting Cultures course with Outward Bound Oman.

As a final touch, 92-year-old Brian Ritchie attended the event with a selection of recently purchased geographical prizes and medals, each of which was received by Bertram Thomas during his glittering career. One of these was the RSGS’s Livingstone Medal, awarded in 1932 and cast in gold.

Perhaps the most telling comments are lines three and four.

Despite having just returned from the Discovery expedition (sent home early on medical grounds), he is already talking of a return to the Antarctic, something that is perhaps not overly surprising. For the Society, however, it does rather suggest he might not stay in the role for too long, despite his claim to his wife that he wanted to settle down in Edinburgh.

His experience as a journalist refers to general articles he had written for the media, and also plays up the expedition newspaper, The South Polar Times, which he had so famously compiled and edited with the crew of the Discovery. A copy is available to view at our visitor centre in Perth; as, of course, is the CV. Many thanks to Phyllis Cleghorn, Sarah Boyd, Margaret Fisher and especially Michael Mulford, each of whom spent hours with the original manuscript and provided invaluable input in solving this mystery.

Membership rate changes At its meeting in March, the RSGS Board reviewed the membership rates which have been in place since 1st August 2016. To help us attract more young people to join the Society, the Board decided to reduce the Student rate from £29 to £20. Other rates will be increased in line with inflation. The new rates will be: Student/SAGT £20 Single £48 Joint/School/Overseas £72 Life £1,280 We are also taking the opportunity to revise our Patron Membership scheme, which allows Members to show a higher level of commitment to the Society’s work, and brings invitations to special events during the year. At present, there is a fixed Patron Membership rate. In future, any Member (paying the standard membership rate) who makes a donation of £100 or more will become a Patron Member for a year after the donation.

L-R: Bryony Dillon, Taeeb Al Alawi, Mike Robinson, Mark Evans, Brian Ritchie.

Happy Polish Centenary!

Congratulations from the RSGS to the Polish Geographical Society (PGS), which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

The first meeting of the PGS took place on 27th January 1918 in Warsaw, at the headquarters of the Polish Merchants Association.

The 47 founding members were people of various professions and scientific specialties, emphasizing the interdisciplinary and conciliatory nature of geography.

In its Jubilee Message to all Geographers of the World (ptgeo. org.pl/en/100-anniversary/message-of-pgs-to-geographers-of-world), the PGS said, “We long for Geography, a beautiful and appealing branch of science, to reclaim its place. In society, in the economic domain and in culture. We need to make all people aware that the world without Geography is a defective and poor construct.

Geography cannot be removed from social perception. And it is dependent on us, as Geographers of this generation and of future generations, to secure a unique place in the time ahead.”

We quite agree! Here at the RSGS, we plan to celebrate the PGS’s centenary with a special display of maps and other items in our collections that are related to Poland.

2 SUMMER 2018

news RSGS Lego advert

HERE we go!

We are delighted to announce a new partnership with HERE, who agreed to support our upcoming Horrible Geography of Scotland project. In return, we will be helping HERE to develop their community mapping platform.

Map Creator enables the public to update online cartographic data, whether that be road attributes, forest paths, building numbers or places. These edits are then verified by HERE, incorporated into the online mapping software, and subsequently made available to millions of users around the world, most notably via the free mobile App, HERE WeGo.

get involved

Thanks to the continuous edits on Map Creator, cartographic coverage and quality is constantly improving, benefiting navigation for the contributors themselves and leading to developments in important applications, websites, GPS devices and geolocation services used, for instance, by organizations such as the emergency services.

Extra pairs of hands are always needed at the RSGS, so we were pleased to get involved with Bring Your Child to Work Day in April. Eleven-yearolds Fergus and Munro, and 13-yearold Euan, arrived at RSGS HQ and were soon knee-deep in office tasks.

They helped our Communications Officer create a media scrapbook for our archive, and bought office supplies. But most impressive of all, they grouped together in the afternoon to complete an advert for the Society. Narrated by the boys and filmed using stop-capture, the video features RSGS Lego explorers tackling some of the world’s most inhospitable environments, including jumper-mountains and bed-sheet-snow! See www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9lzcsrcya4M to be inspired.

The South Pole Energy Challenge

In the coming months, we plan to run a training day in Perth for anybody who is keen to learn more about this exciting project.

Or visit mapcreator.here.com to start contributing today.

Robert Swan is the first person to walk to both the North and South Poles. After seeing first-hand the effects of climate change, he dedicated himself to protecting Antarctica and our 11th planet by promoting recycling, renewable energy and September sustainability.

RSGS Knowledge Exchange Grants

In a talk to be given in Greenock on 11th September, Robert will show how his team achieved a zero-carbon trek to the South Pole, and tell how he continues to encourage the leaders of tomorrow to take responsibility for a sustainable planet. We are jointly producing this event with Ardgowan Distillery, who supported Robert’s team on their trek, and who will shortly be releasing a limited-edition Ardgowan Expedition whisky, containing single malt which was taken all the way to the South Pole. Tickets for Robert Swan: The South Pole Energy Challenge are available via Eventbrite.

We are pleased to launch a new funding initiative which aims to promote Geography through disseminating the results of geographical enquiry and research for the benefit of the wider public. See rsgs.org/exciting-learning/rsgs-grants for details.

A collections milestone Margaret Wilkes, RSGS Collections Team

Edinburgh Group in Perth A party of Members from our Edinburgh Group visited RSGS HQ in April. They were welcomed by Chief Executive Mike Robinson, and enjoyed a tour of the Fair Maid’s House led by Collections Team members Bruce Gittings and Margaret Wilkes. The tour included a specially-honed display of unusual and intriguing items from our collections, plus several Edinburgh gems: Robert Adam’s Plan for the Old Quad of the University of Edinburgh, 1791; and a Plan for the first North Bridge in Edinburgh.

A bunch of banana threats As a global society we have become increasingly reliant on ever-narrower genetic variation in our food. This lack of genetic diversity makes crops more susceptible to viruses, which can mutate more quickly than the crops can evolve defences. The most obvious and well-known example is probably the banana, which forms a vital part of the diet for more than 400 million people. The most significant variety is Cavendish, which constitutes 99% of the export crop worldwide. We used to favour the Gros Michel banana, but it lost the virus fight in the 1950s and was almost entirely wiped out.

The Cavendish is now grown the world over, but diseases and invasive species from its range in South-East Asia now threaten its demise. The brilliantly-named Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV) prevents or stunts fruiting, and is spreading worldwide, along with the caterpillars of the Banana Skipper butterfly.

And to add to its woes, Panama disease TR4, which affects the roots causing fusarium wilt, recently spread to Mozambique causing the loss of 1,300ha of plantation; and it now risks transferring to other African nations. Experts are attempting to stem these attacks with a multi-disciplinary, multi-pronged response. And whilst we all hope they can find ways to protect the Cavendish, we should also perhaps consider how such a staple crop has become so genetically precarious.

food

April 2018 saw Collections Team member Blair White complete his mammoth examination and drawer-listing of the Society’s considerable holding of maps of overseas countries and territories. Blair’s career started in the map library at the Ministry of Defence’s Mapping and Charting Establishment (now MOD’s Defence Geographic Centre). His role later included working with a team to convert MOD’s vast map collection records into electronic format.

Such experience has been invaluable for the daunting task he faced at the RSGS. Blair still has further work to do on the Society’s holdings of UK mapping and on some recent important donations, but his unearthing of semi-forgotten and important 20th-century mapping caused much excitement and allowed us to put some items on display for RSGS visitors.

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SUMMER 2018

Look who’s talking As soon as one talks programme ends, another is being prepared, and though it’s only June, we’ve already got some exciting news to share. Lining up in the wings for the 2018-19 season, we have world-famous explorer Benedict Allen telling the unvarnished truth about his recent solo trip to Papua New Guinea – a trip which saw him make international headlines as he failed to turn up for his scheduled flight. Our President, the ever-popular Professor Iain Stewart, will be touring the south of Scotland, and we are delighted to be welcoming back a cast of our Honorary Fellows, including award-winning cameraman Doug Allan, and BBC Science Editor David Shukman. Keep your eyes peeled across our social media channels for further updates and exciting new announcements!

Fancy an adventure in the desert?

In celebration of the strong ties between Scotland and the Sultanate of Oman, three fully-funded places are now available for young Scots aged between 17 and 25 years to attend a unique five-day Connecting Cultures course in the desert sands of Oman. Organised by Outward Bound Oman, and endorsed by the UN and UNESCO, the course will see participants from around the world engage in exciting, educational and enriching workshops in the desert.

apply now

27th-31st January 2019 (male)

COBRIG In May, we were delighted to host the first north-of-the-border meeting of COBRIG, the Council of British Geography, whose members include the RSGS, the RGS-IBG, the Geographical Association, and the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers.

The nine senior representatives who attended the meeting discussed a wide range of current issues, focusing particularly on curricular Geography teaching, before guests were shown around the Fair Maid’s House and given a delightful tour of the collections by Margaret Wilkes and Kenny Maclean. Our thanks to RSGS Board Member Erica Caldwell for arranging the day.

Since our last edition, we’ve welcomed four new Honorary Fellows to the Society, each one receiving this prestigious award for their contribution to the discipline of geography.

In February, Royal Society of Edinburgh Chief Executive Dr Rebekah Widdowfield received the honour for her pioneering research on homelessness, rural poverty and social exclusion, and for her work as a senior civil servant on rural and environmental science, higher education and housing. For his renowned wildlife photography and longtime support of the RSGS, Lorne Gill was presented with the prestigious award in March; as was Professor Jan Bebbington of the University of St Andrews for her leading academic contribution and joined-up thinking in the fields of accounting and sustainable development. And in April, an Honorary Fellowship was conferred on Mark Evans MBE for his exploration and his commitment to youth engagement and outdoor education in his capacity as Executive Director of Outward Bound Oman, the first and only school of its kind in the Arabic-speaking world.

‘Gull’ping down junk food Rebecca Lakin, a PhD student from the University of St Andrews, is studying the impact of urban environments on young gulls to find out if living in the city is changing their behaviour. She said, “I’m trying to see the difference between urban gulls and those out in places like the Isle of May. I’m looking at how diet plays an important role in how chicks raised in those different environments develop. I’m asking, does diet and the fact gulls feed off anthropogenic food sources, and high-fat, high-carb food like fish, bread and ice cream, have an effect on the physiology and behaviour of gull chicks as they develop?”

See www.gullgirl.co.uk for details of Rebecca’s research.

Change of Chair At its meeting in early May, the RSGS Local Groups Committee appointed Lorna Ogilvie as its new Chair, after Alister Hendrie stood down to become an elected member of the RSGS Board at the AGM in March. We would like to formally thank Alister for his enthusiastic encouragement of the Local Groups over the past few years, and to congratulate and welcome Lorna into her new role.

food

As part of the journey, the youngsters will trek with camels, share stories around the fire, and camp under the stars, with no doors or smartphones to hide behind. So, if you are a young person (or know one) who has an appetite for adventure and is determined to break down stereotypes, contact the RSGS or visit outwardboundoman.com/ Course dates for 2018-19 obo-downloads 9th-13th December 2018 (male) and pop in an 20th-24th January 2019 (female) application!

Celebrating excellence

4 SUMMER 2018

news

A Geographical Issuu

share The Geographer From crime to the carbon cycle, trains to transformation, and happiness to hydrology, online

back issues of The Geographer since 2009 can now be accessed online via digital publishing platform Issuu (issuu.com/rsgspubs), providing a valuable resource for policy-makers, researchers, students and interested readers alike.

Adventuring heroes Our Writer-in-Residence Jo Woolf has been as busy as ever these last few months. She has presented a lecture on Isobel Wylie Hutchison at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, written several blogs for the RSGS website and, most recently, recorded a series of short ‘adventuring hero’ features for BBC Radio Scotland, being aired during May and June on the Friday afternoon programme Out for the Weekend. Jo has provided insights and inspirational stories from the many remarkable explorers and visionaries associated with the RSGS, each of which is included in her recent book, The Great Horizon.

Ordnance Survey in Oman In 2015-16, Ordnance Survey (OS) deployed a team of experts to Muscat to work with the National Survey Authority (NSA) to deliver the first Oman Geospatial Manual. The Manual contains cartography specifications, map standards and survey practice guidelines, and is to be published online for adoption across Oman.

With a goal to create authoritative geospatial information, the NSA aims to set the benchmark for data quality across the Sultanate. The economic value of using authoritative geospatial information, including quality address data, across the economy could be worth as much as OMR 140 million a year. This important work has strengthened Omani-British relations, and has developed a strong foundation for data and map services across the Sultanate. See www.os.uk/international for more information.

RSGS Group walk

Mapping the Future

On a sunny day in April, a party of RSGS Dunfermline Group Members and friends went on a walk to explore paths and woodlands in the Valleyfield area of West Fife. The walk was led by Frank Waterworth of the West Fife Woodlands Group, who gave an excellent guided tour and introduced the walkers to local history, landscape, flowers, wildlife and the work of the Woodland Group. The tour concluded with a visit to the remains of the Valleyfield walled garden, designed by Humphrey Repton, and perusal of a map of the area from the 19th century. The party then adjourned to a local hostelry for well-earned refreshment.

In early April, we navigated our way to a special Edinburgh International Science Festival panel event co-hosted and supported by the RSGS, the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and the Ordnance Survey (OS). Joining our President, Professor Iain Stewart, who chaired the event, were OS Chief Executive Nigel Clifford, geography Professor Paul Longley of UCL, Dr Helen Ferrier, Chief Science Advisor at the National Farmers’ Union, and Javier de la Torre, founder of geospatial company CARTO.

Land and water quality task force Brian D’Arcy, RSGS Member

Example issues are the logging of tropical forests and replacement with intensive farming, water pollution and habitat loss, and sediment smothering of coral reefs; sedimentation of freshwater riffles in rivers; bioaccumulation of persistent pollutants, including concerns for newly emerging as well as legacy pollutants; the polluting impacts of expanding cities on the water environment; and replacement of natural vegetation with human developments.

In London on 18th July a diffuse pollution conference is being held by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in association with the IWA Task Group, and the IWA Diffuse Pollution and Eutrophication Specialist Group.

The principal conference of the latter IWA group is being held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 19th-22nd November 2018 (www. iwadp2018.nu.ac.th/index.php), and participants are welcome.

Vanilla ice price In March 2017, Cyclone Enawo wreaked havoc on Madagascar, the world’s biggest vanilla producer.

Enawo is responsible for roughly halving the availability of vanilla, and as a consequence, by August 2017 vanilla prices had more than trebled, to over $600/kg. Despite recovering slightly at the end of last year, prices have now crept back up to this high, because of uncertainty about this year’s crop. Vanilla is now the second most expensive spice after saffron, and at current levels is more expensive than silver. As Madagascar supplies 75-80% of the world’s vanilla bean market, these prices will impact products globally. So, when you are basking in the heat of the summer, you might need to find another flavour of ice cream or put up with artificial flavourings, at least until the crop begins to recover fully.

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The International Water Association (IWA) has created a new Task Force to highlight the diverse links between land use and water quality across the globe.

19th – 22nd November Whilst the links are well known to geographers, that is less true for policy leaders and the general public. The initiative hopes to make links between environmentalists grappling with different aspects of the same problems, to build the case for better practices and protection of natural assets.

Using an innovative online app to filter questions from the sell-out audience, the experts discussed the ins and outs of recent technological developments in mapping and GIS, their social, ethical and privacy implications, and the future of this fascinating discipline. The thorny cartographic issue of ‘Shetland in a Box’ was also debated at length, following a recent campaign to outlaw the placement of the archipelago in a box somewhere in the Moray Firth. See rsgs.org/is-shetland-a-cartographiccompromise-too-far/ by GIS specialist Bruce Gittings FRSGS to learn more about some of the arguments surrounding this issue.

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SUMMER 2018

Here come the girls

Horrible Geography of Scotland

Geography Day 2018 is fast approaching, and now all you need to do is book your place! Our talks and June displays will be focused on Women in Polar Regions.

On the bill, we have Writer-in-Residence Jo Woolf, who will be unpacking the trips, trials and tribulations of Arctic explorer Isobel Wylie Hutchison. Hazel Robertson, one of our Explorers-inResidence, will be recounting stories from expeditions to the Arctic, including her recent record attempt with husband Luke to cross Alaska. Then, heading to the South Pole, we’ve signed up Dr Beth Christie, an expert in outdoor education, to share her experiences from the largest allfemale research trip to the Antarctic. And, last but not least, there will be ephemera on show from our in-house Collections Team.

We want to inspire more children to study Geography, and so in May we appealed to our Members and other supporters for help in raising the funds needed to create an exciting new book, a special addition to the wonderful Horrible Geography range.

Our plan is to work with the publisher, Scholastic, to produce a funny and Horrible Geography of Scotland informative introduction to Scottish Geography, focusing on the development of Scotland’s landscapes, populations and industries, and drawing on the RSGS’s own heritage, people and archives.

16th

book your place

The event will run at our HQ in Perth, from 11.00am to 3.00pm on Saturday 16th June. Attendance is free, with a donation please for a buffet lunch. Booking (via enquiries@rsgs.org or 01738 455050) is essential as numbers are restricted due to limited space.

A new drama which will run at this year’s Edinburgh 3rd - 25th Festival Fringe imagines the tragi-comic misfortunes August of an 18-year-old stowaway aboard the legendary 1914-16 Endurance expedition to Antarctica. Initially the stowaway is in complete awe of Shackleton, but this fades by the time they are trapped in the polar ice pack, even more so when Endurance actually breaks up and sinks, leaving the party adrift on the ice, hundreds of miles from civilisation. Created and performed by Stolen Elephant Theatre, Shackleton’s Stowaway will be performed at theSpace at Surgeon’s Hall, 3rd-25th August at 9.10pm.

Medals for young explorers

On 26th April, ten young explorers swapped the hardships of the Arctic for the luxurious surrounds of Broomhall House near Dunfermline. The occasion was, of course, the annual Polar Academy medal ceremony, this year to recognise the adventurous spirit of seven girls and three boys from Lochgelly High School in Fife, each of whom had completed an arduous 14-day expedition to Eastern Greenland with the charity. The event took place in the home of Lord Bruce, whose family tree is awash with explorers of old.

The Polar Academy was founded in 2013 by RSGS Explorerin-Residence Craig Mathieson, with the aim of inspiring young people with low self esteem to achieve their potential. And in just over four years, the charity has engaged over 60,000 children across Scotland. Paying tribute to the Polar Academy’s most recent participants, Craig said, “These pupils have achieved the extraordinary by pushing themselves physically and mentally to the limit. Their rekindled sense of self-confidence is evident to all.”

RSGS Appeal Envelope 18H.indd 1

please help

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We will distribute copies to primary and secondary schools across Scotland, along with associated curricular-linked lesson plans.

In support, we will create an attractive exhibition to display in our Perth visitor centre and make available to others, and we will promote the project through our networks and media channels.

If you have not yet made a donation but would like to, or if you would like to know more about the project, please get in touch with us at RSGS HQ. We think this is a terrific way to enthuse young people, and we are grateful to the author and the publisher of the Horrible Geography books for their enthusiastic support.

Child obesity in Scotland In its Healthy Weight and Diet plan, due to be published in summer 2018, the Scottish Government will set a target of halving childhood obesity by 2030. Currently, 29% of children in Scotland are at risk of being overweight, including 14% who are at risk of being obese. Obesity is a serious problem in the country, and responses to a recent public consultation on the healthy weight plan showed strong support for the government restricting marketing of unhealthy food.

Announcing the commitment in May, while meeting campaigner and chef Jamie Oliver in London to discuss joint action to tackle child obesity and unhealthy eating, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said, “Evidence shows obese children are likely to stay obese into adulthood and become more likely to suffer health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases at a younger age.”

Professor Linda Bauld, Cancer Research UK’s cancer prevention expert said, “Obesity is the biggest cause of cancer after smoking and is responsible for around 2,200 cases a year in Scotland. In the battle to protect the health of future generations, it’s crucial laws are introduced to restrict the damaging supermarket junk food price promotions that are contributing to the nation’s obesity problem.”

CanGeo quiz Each year, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) produces the prestigious CanGeo Challenge, a national quizzing competition for young people that celebrates all things geography. And in late May, the nail-biting grand final was streamed around the world, including into the RSGS offices, as students racked their brains to answer questions on geomorphology, glaciology, global population, and everything in between. As part of our new relationship with the RCGS, we were delighted to contribute a round on the Geography of Scotland, covering some of the country’s most famous physical and human geography features.

food

Shackleton’s Stowaway

- great new project for schools

6 SUMMER 2018

Is every good food nation alike?

Pete Ritchie, Executive Director, Nourish Scotland

As Scotland considers the forthcoming Good Food Nation Bill, it’s worth recalling Tolstoy’s famous dictum in Anna Karenina that “all happy families are alike.” Today there is increasing convergence in ‘bad food nations’ where precarious food workers prop up a system which manages to combine overconsumption with scarcity, and advanced technology with ecological vandalism.

But are all Good Food Nations much the same too? Or is there something distinctive about Scotland which would shape the sort of Good Food Nation we could be?

One striking feature of the Scottish foodscape is the limited overlap between what we produce and what we eat. Well over 90% of our lamb goes south, along with 90% of our wild and farmed fish, and most of our soft fruit, potatoes and veg. Most of our barley and wheat goes for animal feed and booze. In comes chicken (we produce less than 1% of what we eat), tuna, pork, and a panoply of processed products like crisps, breakfast cereals and ready meals. On a world index of food system dislocation, we would be in the premier league.

translates to 10kg a year, a positively gluttonous level from the perspective of the previous Scottish Parliament.

Inequality scars Scotland, with a seemingly intractable gap in life expectancy and life experience. This has deep historical roots, and post-war progress has been held back both by rapid deindustrialisation in the last half century and the last decade of austerity.

Our diet is distinctively bad; too much alcohol and too much sugar contribute to us being one of the fattest nations in Europe, and we eat far too little fruit, veg and fibre.

“One striking feature of the Scottish foodscape is the limited overlap between what we produce and what we eat.”

We’re an outlier too on land ownership, with a strikingly unequal distribution of the means of production. Access to land isn’t just a problem in the glens: people in London are twice as likely as Scots to have access to an allotment. Our geography takes us out of the OECD mainstream, with challenges on most of our land from soil, rainfall, latitude or altitude (though that is why God invented glasshouses).

Our history is distinctive, too. The rapid demographic transition described by Tom Devine and others shifted us from one of Western Europe’s most rural regions to one of its most urban within two generations. The lack of land rights, forced clearances (first in the South of Scotland, then in the Highlands), and the new jobs in the towns and cities saw people leave rural hardship for city squalor – and at the same time trade their limited food access and autonomy for single ends without kitchens and a dearth of fresh food.

Women made up much of the workforce in Glasgow and Dundee in the mid-19th century, leaving the cooking to the ‘kettle boilers’, and it’s no wonder that the jam piece (on white bread of doubtful quality) replaced porridge as our favourite fast food.

Glasgow was built on sugar and tobacco, and the slave trade which underpinned them. These two new products only had value if people consumed them: the wholesale violence against millions of slaves required a population-wide shift in habits which is taking generations to reverse. The startling rise in UK sugar consumption from less than 2kg a year in 1700 to almost 40kg a year in 1900 is part of the history of Empire. And while the current government recommendations of reducing sugar intake from 14% of our energy to 5% seem wildly ambitious, that

So how does all this ‘terroir’ shape us as a Good Food Nation? Every Good Food Nation has some common characteristics: sustainable diets; positive animal welfare; post-pesticide, nature-friendly ‘circular economy’ agriculture mitigating climate change; good jobs in food with strong rights for workers and tenants; and a convivial eating culture in and out of home. What extra do we need to do in Scotland?

First of all, we need a focus on equality and rights. Dietary inequality has narrowed a little since John Boyd Orr’s 1926 study of Food, Health and Income, but it’s still the case that to eat the government’s recommended diet would cost some households 30-40% of income, and 10% of our children are growing up in households which are food insecure. A core expectation of our Good Food Nation is that ‘all’ means all: affordable access to good food is just one of the things which you come to expect if you live in Scotland.

Second, our Good Food Nation must eat more of what it produces and produce more of what it eats. This is not such a challenge for France, or Brazil, but with our main supply chains and our food and drink policy geared to export, Scotland has to rebuild its local food economy. A good food nation connects its food and its land (and sea) to its people, with everyone who wants to grow some of their own food having access to land, and everyone able to buy direct from a farmer, a fisherperson or a market garden, from a baker using local flour or a cheesemaker using local milk.

Like the new Nordic diet, we need to ground our cuisine more strongly in what grows well here – root crops, soft fruit, oats and barley – and fuse this with the diverse influences of new Scots from all over the world.

Third, our Good Food Nation is inclusive, vernacular: part of our evolving sense of who we are. Not an ‘us and them’ thing where ‘they’ need to be (re-)educated, and where good food is seen as posh. In our Good Food Nation we all take better care of ourselves and each other when it comes to food. Because we’re worth it.

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SUMMER 2018

Rebuilding diversity: the key to sustainable food systems Olivier De Schutter, legal scholar

If the changes that are required to build sustainable food systems could be summed up in a single word, it would be diversity. A series of shifts must occur in parallel – and diversity is at the heart of all of them.

Firstly, dietary diversity is required to address a range of diet-related health epidemics. More than half of the European population is now overweight or obese. Poor diets are the leading risk factor for all healthy life years lost in Europe, and account for up to 49% of the burden of cardiovascular disease, Europe’s biggest killer. Some two billion people worldwide suffer from micronutrient deficiencies (MND), including persistently high numbers in wealthy nations. The benefits of a more diverse diet are now widely recognized, particularly increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, pulses, nuts and seeds.

Secondly, agro-biodiversity must be urgently restored in order to put farming systems on a sustainable footing and rebuild resilience. Monocultures and industrial feedlots are at the heart of agriculture’s severest impacts on the environment. Large-scale, intensive agriculture is the largest contributor to global land degradation, which continues at an alarming rate of 12 million hectares per year.

Meanwhile, livestock grazing and feed crop production have been the main agricultural drivers of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.

The erosion of genetic diversity in industrial food systems also leaves the food supply highly vulnerable. Of the 7,000 plants used by humans as food, rice, maize and wheat now make up more than 50% of plant-based food intake. Of the 7,616 livestock breeds in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Databank, 6,536 of these are found in one country only – and 20% are ‘at risk’.

These trends could be devastating, given the unpredictability of future climate and disease stresses. For example, a new strain of soil fungus affecting plantations of the Cavendish cultivar, accounting for the vast majority of commercial banana plantations, could devastate the banana industry in Latin America, which currently accounts for 80% of global trade.

ever more reliant on a handful of suppliers and buyers, further squeezing their incomes and eroding their ability to choose what to grow, how to grow it, and for whom. Nor has it benefitted consumers, despite the illusion of choice that they encounter on the supermarket shelf. For example, a US study found that four leading grocery retailers controlled 63.3% of sales of 100 basic grocery items, and more than 75% of sales for 32 of these items – with little differentiation between them in terms of ingredients or underlying production standards.

As these trends show, an industrial logic is hardwired into modern food and farming systems. Reliance on uniform, largescale commodity production, chemical inputs and cheap food are the default responses, despite the high externalities or ‘hidden costs’ of this model. The transition to sustainable food systems is therefore contingent on shifting the underlying logic and guiding principles of these systems.

Change on a single front will not suffice. Diversification of agriculture will have little impact without a parallel shift in the food distribution and retail sector. Farmers need to know that they will find remunerative markets in order to take on the costs and the risks of a transition to sustainable, diversified production.

This requires the development of farmers’ markets, direct sales networks, small-scale and co-operative-owned retail outlets – as well as requiring mainstream processors and retailers to adapt their practices.

“Farmers need to know that they will find remunerative markets in order to take on the costs and the risks of a transition to sustainable, diversified production.”

Future yields are also being jeopardized by the erosion of wild biodiversity that has gone hand in hand with the loss of agrobiodiversity. The extinction of wild species and the application of insecticides threaten the 35% of global crops dependent on pollination. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the presence of pollinators tends to be significantly lower in monocultures than in fields containing diverse forage and nesting sites.

Furthermore, the diversity of actors in food systems is under threat. A series of recent mega-mergers have allowed increasing market share and political power to accrue to a handful of key players. For example, recent deals will place as much as 70% of the agrochemical industry in the hands of only three merged companies. Meanwhile, the merger between leading fertilizer companies PotashCorp and Agrium, Kraft-Heinz’s bid for processing giant Unilever, and online retailer Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market are proof that mega-deals are sweeping across all nodes of the chain.

Consolidation across the agri-food industry has made farmers

Similarly, re-diversification of the agro-food industry requires parallel steps to promote dietary diversification and agro-diversity.

Small-scale independent operators cannot compete with mass retailers on price, capacity and variety. But they can offer seasonal fresh and nutritious products, and they can revive local specialties, ie they can offer true diversity. However, they can only do so on the basis of consumer awareness about the benefits of dietary diversity, and a parallel willingness among producers to shift towards value-added, local supply chains.

In other words, joined-up food and farming policies are required, and these policies must signpost a new direction of travel. Diversity – of diets, of crops and livestock, of food system actors – can provide the new paradigm.

Olivier De Schutter is former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and the co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). The panel’s 2016 report, From Uniformity to Diversity (www.ipes-food.org/ images/Reports/UniformityToDiversity_FullReport.pdf), made the case for a shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological food and farming systems. IPES-Food is leading a two-year process of research and reflection to develop a Common Food Policy vision for the EU.

8 SUMMER 2018

Food geographies Professor Peter Atkins, Emeritus Professor of Geography, Durham University

In the last ten years human geographers have become interested in all aspects of food. It has been part of a trend towards understanding the everyday, unacknowledged aspects of our lives.

And about time you might say. The breadth of new work has been remarkable, from studies of global commodity chains to local food networks, from retail cornucopias to food deserts, and from materials to senses and emotions. Are you keeping up? You should try. This is one of the most exciting and vibrant branches of human geography right now, and recent ‘food turns’ have also been apparent across the humanities and social sciences.

My own small part of this rapidly growing field has involved work in five areas, and I will use these as a framework for what follows. One is food policy. In my case this has meant looking at the early 20th century for the United Kingdom as a whole at a time when governments did not regard food as a priority. I found, for instance, that school milk was expanded nationwide in 1934 as a means of creating a market for an ailing dairy sector rather than because politicians were necessarily dedicated to improving child health. A year later the same ministers then attempted to suppress a report by the eminent Scottish nutritionist John Boyd Orr, who had concluded that malnutrition and food poverty were widespread in the UK. It interests me that food policy makers in Scotland and England have demonstrated divergence over the last 100 years, not just in the particular needs of their populations but also in their desire for action. Scotland is presently ahead of the pack among the four nations because of its search for a coherent and proactive set of food policies. An example is the public consultation on the Good Food Nation Bill which will begin in 2018 with a view to legislation in the present parliament. This is happening in the context of several unknowns, such as the impact of Brexit upon the food sector, and whether a consensus can be reached on anti-obesity proposals that include restrictions on advertising and retail price promotions of foods high in fat, salt and sugar.

In one sense such political interventions are nothing more than an attempt to correct trends that reach far back into our food history.

These include four strands of what I call ‘food pathologies’, all of which are reflections on food quality or quantity. The first is the adulteration of food. This was rampant in the 19th century, as covered in my book Liquid Materialities (2010), but a shocking series of recent revelations shows that such cheating continues. The most prominent example was the 2013 scandal when horse meat was found to have been substituted for other meats in supermarket products such as burgers.

The second pathology is food as a pathway of infectious disease and contaminants. In my History of Uncertainty (2016) I showed that in the period 1850 to 1950 there was a widespread risk of catching bovine tuberculosis from raw milk. Although that particular issue has been solved by pasteurization, there are still risks to public health in other food channels. News reports in February 2018, for instance, suggested that poor hygiene and cross-contamination persist in some meat cutting plants. We may conclude that complacency about modern food systems would be unwise.

Third, there is the pathology of waste.

Historically this included the negative externality of the waste products of food production, including manure from animals kept in cities. I looked at this in Animal Cities (2012). Waste today though is more likely to mean food that could be eaten or recycled but is sent to landfill because of logistical inefficiencies or because our lifestyles are no longer geared to thrift. Here Zero Waste Scotland has a role to play, with its ambition of reducing food waste by one third before 2025, a tough but laudable target.

Finally, there is the pathology of hunger and famine. We know that over 800 million people are undernourished in the world, a shaming statistic, but when hunger is shown to be on our own doorstep that means that we are responsible. How is it possible in 2018 for there to be food poverty and food insecurity on a large scale in an advanced country such as Scotland? There are currently 52 food bank centres in Scotland run by the Trussell Trust and another 70 independent units. The number of food parcels distributed was nearly 150,000 in 2016-17. This represents approximately 27 per 1,000 head of population, by comparison with 17 for England and Wales.

“We should be supporting and celebrating the many sustainable, local, high quality, artisan food and drink products that represent the best of Scottish enterprise.”

While the topics I have chosen here may seem to emphasise the negative, I want to finish by reiterating my comments at the outset that food geographies offer boundless possibilities for looking at positive stories north of the border. In my view we should be supporting and celebrating the many sustainable, local, high quality, artisan food and drink products that represent the best of Scottish enterprise.

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SUMMER 2018

Can legislation make the food system make sense?

Bella Crowe, Policy Officer, Nourish Scotland

How well is Scotland’s food system working? Quite well you might think, looking at Scotland’s food export figures.

Scotland’s food and drink exports are at a record high, due to significant growth in whisky and fish and seafood sales.

Not so well, if your perspective is instead on the number of food banks in Scotland. There is no systematic data collected on food insecurity, but statistics from food banks reveal an increasing reliance on emergency food aid, while official figures indicate a rise in overall poverty, with an estimated one million Scots in poverty after housing costs.

These are just two examples, but ask an ecologist, a doctor, a farmer, a carer, an abattoir operative, a chef, or anyone you like, and they will give you a different perspective on whether our food system is working. They might cite the degradation of Scotland’s soils and loss of wildlife due to unsustainable agricultural practices. Or reference the burden of diet-related illnesses on individuals, communities and our national health service. Or celebrate access to diverse food all year round, through smooth international supply chains. Or talk about poor animal welfare, or how hard it is to make a decent living from producing, processing or preparing food.

The Scottish Food Coalition came together in 2015 with a belief that we have to look at the whole food system in order to develop effective solutions. Taking any one problem in isolation may well make others worse. This has led to some interesting discussions: for example, environmental organisations stress the need to reduce our meat consumption for diets to be more sustainable, while unions are cautious about changes that may jeopardise the workers, such as meatpackers, they represent. Those primarily concerned with access to food raise concerns about any changes that may increase the cost of food and therefore price even more people out of a decent diet, while others argue that food is too cheap, which ultimately costs a lot in terms of the treatment of animals, workers and the environment.

is a tale of robust discussion and balancing of different ideals. Articulating priorities that make sense to everyone is a challenge, but the experience of the last three years has shown it to be possible.

There is no space within Government in which priorities of different departments in respect to food are shared, the implications on others are investigated, and coherent approaches are reached. While the Food and Drink division works hard to support the food industry and celebrates export figures, the impact of using Scotland’s limited prime agricultural land for wheat and barley to go into whisky production rather than supply chains that nourish Scotland’s population is not explored. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport has a target to cut childhood obesity in half by 2030, whilst the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform aims to restore our ecosystems to good ecological health. These conversations are happening in separate spaces, which means an absence of honest discussion regarding what the priorities are and what compromises need to be made.

In 2016, the Scottish Government committed to introducing a Good Food Nation Bill “to draw together all aspects of the Scottish Government’s work on Food and Drink”. This is an exciting promise of joining the dots to address food system challenges. Legislation could establish the core purpose of the food system in law, and create governance mechanisms to ensure that different departments are working together to reach their targets – whether that’s a target on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, household food insecurity or obesity – rather than undermining each other.

“This is an exciting promise of joining the dots to address food system challenges.”

The Scottish Food Coalition has become a space in which organisations can understand how food injustices impact on each other, and how they are manifesting in Scotland today.

We agree that we are working for a just transition to a food system that is fair, healthy and sustainable – that’s the easy part! Developing our work plan to progress this ambition

The experience of the Scottish Food Coalition has shown that articulating how we want to transform our food system is complex, but food (meaning our well-being, communities, health, wildlife, environment, worker rights, animal welfare, etc) is so important that, given the space to do so, people are willing to work together to carve out a path that makes sense for each agenda and the whole picture. The Scottish Food Coalition, along with communities across Scotland, are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to shape the Good Food Nation Bill.

10 SUMMER 2018

Putting rights on the table Polly Jones, Project Manager, A Menu for Change

There is something rotten at the heart of our food system.

Hundreds of thousands of Scots are now depending on food bank parcels to feed themselves and their families, and this is increasing at a faster rate in Scotland than the rest of the UK. A Menu for Change is a three-year project working with public bodies and charities across Scotland to test local strategies to prevent food insecurity and advocate for national strategies to address food insecurity.

There is no mystery about what is causing this crisis. The fundamental problem is one of low income.

Wages have been squeezed, benefits are frozen and the cost of living has risen. Added to which, the Trades Union Congress finds almost 40% of the growth in employment between 2011 and 2016 came from workers in insecure jobs: zero-hours contracts or insecure temporary work.

There is also little mystery about the action that needs be taken to address the failings of the social security safety net or the jobs market. The UK Government must act urgently to end the benefits freeze and rethink welfare reforms that are leaving so many reliant on charity handouts. Universal Credit may be right in principle, but where it has been rolled out, new data shows 52% more people are seeking emergency food aid. Companies also need to go beyond food bank collections in their supermarkets and workplaces. They can make a significant difference to those with the lowest income by paying the real living wage and offering secure employment.

volunteers stepping up to help, but it would place the responsibility for protecting any of us from going hungry firmly with the state. Preventing hunger is such a basic and fundamental part of the contract between state and citizen, it is peculiar this hasn’t yet been matched with legal powers to enforce this right.

The Good Food Nation Bill is more than a right to food. It also enables us to act strategically to improve the food in every part of our public life, from land to table and back again.

The policy landscape is littered with siloed food initiatives, be it emergency food aid, holiday hunger or food waste, which address part of the same problem without addressing the root cause or joining them up.

“The policy landscape is littered with siloed food initiatives which address part of the same problem without addressing the root cause or joining them up.”

So far, so UK. However, with the emergence of the Good Food Nation Bill, Scotland has a new opportunity to hold the Scottish Government to account for the food insecurity (worrying where your next meal is coming from) experienced by its citizens. Having another lever to hold the government to account can only be a positive thing.

Despite the outcry about the extent of food insecurity and concerted campaigning across the UK, policy change in these areas has been agonisingly slow.

The Good Food Nation Bill provides a unique opportunity to enshrine the right to food in law, making Scotland the first part of the UK to do so. Although there are some minimum standards for the food Scotland produces and consumes, the food system is broadly left to the direction of market forces or interventions by the charity sector. Emergency food aid is a case in point, with an army of volunteers contributing four million hours of unpaid work to run the UK’s food banks last year.

Recognising the right to food wouldn’t stop charities and

By looking at every area of public life through a food lens, we can ensure the Scottish Government’s new social security system reflects the actual cost of living; introduce a duty on local authorities to guarantee vulnerable people have access to nutritious food; and make sure all pupils have eaten well enough to be able to learn, in and out of term-time. We could adapt the approach the Scottish Government has taken on climate change to introduce statutory targets for tackling household food insecurity.

Scotland has distinguished itself among the UK nations for its vocal commitment to address food insecurity. With hundreds of thousands of people still worrying where their next meal is coming from, there is plenty more to be done, at every level of government. The Good Food Nation Bill is an opportunity for the Scottish Government to galvanise action around the food system and for all of us to assert our right to food.

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SUMMER 2018

The cost of food Raj Patel, Senior Research Associate, Unit for Humanities, Rhodes University, and Research Professor, University of Texas, Austin

South Africa is currently reeling from a listeria outbreak. At the end of April 2018, 199 people had been confirmed killed by listeriosis originating at a meat processing facility owned by parent company Tiger Brands. The company is bracing for a $US2 billion lawsuit: $10 million per life. But this isn’t the first time South Africans have been killed by their food system and, unless there’s a change, it won’t be the last.

Imagine that Tiger Brands goes bankrupt paying for the deaths of people caused by its polony and other meat. South Africa will still be in the grips of a food system that sells killer food. The number of adults aged 30-69 who died from diabetes in 2016 was about 100 times higher than died from listeria. Across the world, when diets shift to products high in added sugar, poor health follows, and in South Africa the epidemic is just beginning.

But at the same time as South Africans grapple with high blood sugar, many continue to fight hunger – especially children. Children in South Africa are stunted, and child malnutrition rates are stubbornly high. Why? Because the cost of living is far higher than can be covered by social security and welfare payments. Around the world, no matter which country, working and poor people struggle to be able to eat five fresh fruits and vegetables a day. Hunger, malnutrition, diabetes and poverty often go hand in hand.

One answer to this paradox appears obvious: make food cheaper. But remember that some of the poorest people are those working in the food system. Drop the price of food, and who gets squeezed? It’s not the shareholders or executives in the food industry who are hurt by lower priced food. Oxfam South Africa points out that in under five days, a top executive at the South African Shoprite supermarket chain will earn more than a temporary farmworker in South African vineyards will earn in their entire working life. That huge inequality is only possible because of the exploitation of the workers whose labour makes food possible.

Even if the food industry paid workers properly, the food industry would still be in receipt of massive subsidy.

The management consultants, KPMG, reported in 2012 that the food industry’s ecological footprint, conservatively estimated by looking at waste, greenhouse gas emissions and water use, was 224% of its revenue of $89 billion. I was sent this report by a senior executive for sustainability at Nestlé, who suggested that these figures were consonant with his company’s own internal estimates. To put this slightly differently – there’s no such thing as a sustainable industrial food system, and insiders know it all too well.

So what might be done? In sub-Saharan Africa, small-

scale peasant farmers produce over 75% of most food commodities. And it is from peasant farmers that one of the most important ideas about how to change the food system has come. It’s called ‘food sovereignty’. Instead of asking governments to make cheap food available, and putting power in the hands of the big food corporations to do that, peasants, small-scale farmers and landless workers organized themselves. Their movement, La Via Campesina, has over 200 million members, and they developed the idea that communities should have direct control over ending hunger where they live.

Communities in charge of food policy is a radical idea because the authors of food policy have always been corporations and governments. South Africa was founded by a food corporation: the Dutch East India Company was one of the world’s most powerful, and brutal, companies, and every South African lives – and dies – under its legacy.

So, concretely, what might food sovereignty look like? Instead of cheaper food, it would mean higher wages, better welfare entitlements and comprehensive agrarian reform, meaning land reform in rural and urban areas. It’s an approach that values everyone’s voice equally – and that means gender equality. One of the slogans is that “food sovereignty is an end to all forms of violence against women.”

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. If communities are to write their own food policy, then everyone must be able to do it, not just a few. And that means that voices of everyone must count.

“There’s no such thing as a sustainable industrial food system.”

Already, this new food system is being practised in schools for new farming systems, called agroecology, across Latin America. In these schools, workers and farmers learn not just how to grow crops, but the political changes that will have to happen so that everyone can eat well. Schools like this show how we’ll value the intelligence, dignity and labour of food system workers, from farm to fork.

And along the way, it means being able to escape the dark legacy of a world made by food corporations, and the death they’ve profited from for centuries.

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic.

His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, and he is a co-author most recently of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things.

12 SUMMER 2018

Don’t leave others hungry Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland

Teresa is from Lowareng’ak, an area in Turkana, northern Kenya.

It hasn’t rained there for over a year. Fortunately, a new borehole, installed by Oxfam, means Teresa has access to a reliable source of water. Not everyone is so lucky. “It is hard for those who don’t have these [boreholes],” Teresa says. “Some walk for hours to come find water here. One woman told me that if she had known sooner that we had water here, her animals would still be alive today.”

More than 15.8 million people are affected by the drought in East Africa, and at least 13 million are severely food insecure. The drought has caused crops to fail and cattle to die, while the lack of clean water is increasing the threat of cholera and other diseases.

No-one knows the importance of this connection more than people living in Turkana. Four failed rain seasons in a row, higher temperatures and drier conditions have meant that there has not been a successful planting or harvest season since 2015. Hunger is the inevitable consequence.

Margaret lives around a hundred kilometres away from Teresa, in Kapua village. She must walk four kilometres from her home to a well just to fill her 20-litre bucket with water. “I have to make several trips to have enough water for my children,” Margaret says. “Some days I’m too weak to go, so we either borrow from our neighbours, or wait until I’m strong enough.”

“Other governments have already committed to achieving zero emissions by 2040 or 2050; Scotland’s ambition cannot fall behind.”

Scotland is over 10,000km from Turkana. Yet decisions made here, and in other developed countries, can be felt by Teresa and her neighbours. Take the forthcoming Good Food Nation Bill at the Scottish Parliament. At a time of scandalous food insecurity in Scotland, the Bill will, rightly, focus on domestic policy and practice. Unlike in East Africa, there is no shortage of food in Scotland: here, our supermarket shelves are full, but not everyone can afford to buy the food they need.

But millions of people around the world, like Teresa, have a stake in this Bill too. If Scotland is truly to become a Good Food Nation, we must end food insecurity in Scotland while ensuring the actions we take here don’t inadvertently result in more people facing hunger in other parts of the world. Achieving this twin objective is critical to delivering upon our commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals, including ending hunger. While the Goals are global, realising them by 2030 requires both change at national level and an acceptance that the impact, good or bad, will be felt far beyond national borders.

In Scotland, this means government departments – whether they lead on food, social justice, the environment or international development – must act together rather than in isolation. After all, food and the natural environment are inextricably linked. It’s therefore imperative that officials and Ministers recognise the deep linkages between the Good Food Nation Bill and Scotland’s upcoming new Climate Change Bill.

The drought across East Africa is a slow, creeping disaster. But it shouldn’t surprise us. Climate scientists and activists have warned for years that climate change would cause or intensify crises like this one. For the people impacted, climate change is not a distant, future threat. It is changing their lives now.

Catastrophic loss of life today is not inevitable: urgent and robust humanitarian and political action now will prevent the worst from happening. But beyond this crisis, we must do more to reduce new emissions while building people’s resilience to the climate extremes that can no longer be avoided.

The Scottish Government must therefore use the impetus of becoming a Good Food Nation to re-energise its resolve to be a world leader on climate change. That means being ambitious when setting their new emission reduction targets by delivering on Stop Climate Chaos Scotland’s call for a target of net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. Other governments – like Sweden, New Zealand, France and Iceland – have already committed to achieving zero emissions by 2040 or 2050; Scotland’s ambition cannot fall behind.

There can be no stronger driver for change than the level of suffering in East Africa. And there could be no greater way to demonstrate Scotland’s ability to deliver a coherent, crossgovernment approach than by ensuring the Good Food Nation and Climate Change Bills work together to protect people from hunger; wherever they live.

A young boy carrying an empty 20-litre water jerry can at Nasechabuin, Turkana. He walks around 4km to collect water from a scoop hole which is about 50m deep. © Joyce Kabue | Oxfam

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SUMMER 2018

Golden oldies: heritage wheat and genetic diversity Andrew Whitley, Scotland The Bread

As summer progresses, the carpet of green that swathes the East of Scotland from the Black Isle to Berwick turns gold.

Much of this is wheat – the home-grown harvest to feed a healthy populace. Not quite. In a good year, Scotland grows about a million tons of wheat, but less than two hundred tons of that is used directly for bread. The rest goes for industrial processing, animal feed and distilling (biofuels for cars, alcohol for people). “You can’t grow bread wheat in Scotland,” say most farmers, even as they struggle to make a living producing big yields at great cost to themselves, their soils and the environment (think low commodity prices, nitrogen run-off, pesticide and herbicide residues, and carbon emissions from intensive farming). A new community organisation, Scotland The Bread, is showing that you can, if you use the right varieties. The key to these is not so much their age as their diversity.

accompanying factors) of such narrowly-focused plant breeding stand out. Modern varieties are uniquely dependent on chemical fertilisers, fungicides and pesticides; and, while no-one was looking, the content of the grain changed.

Green Revolution wheat varieties – the kind that are used in almost all the bread we eat – have fewer important minerals (iron, zinc, magnesium) than older varieties. They often have more ‘epitopes’ of gliadin protein that trigger coeliac and similar auto-immune and intolerance conditions. Breeding pest-resistance into modern wheat may have increased the prevalence of proteins called amylase tripsin inhibitors (ATIs). These are primary resistance molecules that ward off pests. But they are also strong activators of human immune responses and inflammation, and may contribute to the onset or worsening of coeliac disease and non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.

“Cultivating diversity harnesses the adaptive, evolutionary power of nature.”

Modern commercial wheat varieties are bred by crossing one variety with another. The resulting grains have ‘hybrid vigour’ and among them may be some which produce the desired mix of high yield, breadmaking quality and disease resistance. Since wheat plants are naturally self-fertile, their progeny are genetically identical.

A field of modern wheat contains billions of plants that are the same as each other and therefore, by definition, equally vulnerable to the same threats, of climate, disease or pests.

By contrast, traditional varieties or ‘landraces’ that have developed in a place through a combination of natural evolution and farmer selection, usually display great genetic variation, as can be seen both under the microscope and with the naked eye in obvious differences in straw length and spike (ear) size and morphology (compact or lax, pointed, bearded, etc). In this enormous genetic diversity lies a fundamental resilience: whatever rust, fungus, aphid, midge, drought or cold assails such a crop, some plants will survive. Cultivating diversity harnesses the adaptive, evolutionary power of nature. Such an approach, supported by the impressive analytical tools of molecular biology and genomics which help us to ‘see what we’ve got’, looks a better long-term bet than the current orthodoxy: an expensive race against time based on breeding ‘resistance’ into genetically identical clones, which may all succumb together to any new strain of pathogen spawned by nature in the convenient field laboratories inadvertently provided by modern intensive cereal monocultures.

The so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s was based on a breeding ‘package’ involving two key elements: a ‘dwarfing gene’ (from a Japanese wheat) which enabled wheat plants to carry heavier heads without ‘lodging’ in wind or rain, and increased use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. A radical narrowing of genetic diversity was compounded as almost all wheat breeders in the past half century based their work either explicitly on the new ‘high-yielding varieties’, or on similar selection criteria, such as maximum yield, targeted pest/disease resistance and end-use quality as prescribed by industrial mills and bakeries. Two consequences (or

Modern plant breeding sits uncomfortably between two fields in which diversity is accepted as a fundamental operating principle: soil science and the human microbiome. In soils and stomachs, disease and poor function are associated with imbalance and a lack of microbial diversity. It makes little sense to breed and grow our staple wheat varieties as if the opposite were true.

Scotland The Bread is now producing flour from three varieties (Rouge d’Ecosse, Golden Drop and Hunter’s) that were commonly used by bakers in the 19th century. But this isn’t a ‘museum’ project. These ‘heritage’ grains are a repository of diversity, despised or ignored by the Green Revolution, which we can now see as a priceless asset. They are a starting point for the development of a wealth of local ‘modern landraces’, each adapted to produce consistent yields of high-nutrient, digestible and tasty grain, flour and bread.

Visit www.scotlandthebread.org for further information and to buy heritage Scottish flour.

14 SUMMER 2018

Food comes from the soil after all!

Professor Roger Crofts, Chair, RSGS

When people think of food they usually think about the supermarket. Asked where bread comes from, children say ‘from the shop’.

Somehow, we seem to have lost the connection between the food we eat and where and how it is produced. That’s why I think it is important that we all think more about the land and the soil as the source of our food, and not just about nutrition and diet.

ourselves and for all of the plants and animals in nature. If we look after it properly, as good stewards, then we will be able to take the interest and maintain the capital asset. This is after all how we think about property we own, for example. We should do the same for the land and the soil. This means, as we move remorselessly to leaving the EU and its Common Agricultural Policy, that we adopt approaches attuned to maintaining that capital and taking an income from it. The Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement is the ground-breaking way forward. But, unless it becomes a fundamental component of support for farmers and food production, it will remain just a statement. It needs to be fully implemented in practice as part of the support package for the future of our land and the food it produces.

“Scotland is naturally blessed with a great variety of soils for producing food.”

Scotland is naturally blessed with a great variety of soils for producing food. Decades ago this was surveyed and its capability for agriculture assessed; this means, its potential for producing food. The resulting map was produced by the (then) Macaulay Institute for Soil Research, now part of the James Hutton Institute. The prime quality agricultural land is in the east. Arable areas of the north-east for growing barley for bread and for whisky and beer. Friable sandy soils in Strathmore and Fife for root crops, especially potatoes and carrots. Soils for producing vegetable oils for cooking and food blending, again in the east. Clay soils in the south-west for dairy for milk, cream and cheeses. Damp acidic soils in the uplands for prime Scottish lamb. And so on. But are we looking after these priceless food producing assets as well as we should? No!

The arguments in this article comprise part of a wider talk, Scotland’s Land: failures and successes, challenges and opportunities, given as the 2018 Peter Wilson Lecture. See www.rogercrofts.net for a summary and action agenda, and youtu.be/fbq4EbOT55E to hear the talk in full.

Why is this happening and what should be done about it?

First, we must stop the thoughtless covering-over of our best agricultural land and the soils it comprises with concrete for industrial development and housing. Currently, Scottish Planning Policy, published in 2016, states that development on Prime Quality Agricultural Land should not be permitted.

But then makes the following exceptions which totally undermine this primacy: ‘this land can be developed as a component of settlement strategy, or if it is essential to meet an established need such as major infrastructure development, or for small-scale development directly linked to rural business, or the generation of energy from renewable sources’. In other words, the traditional safeguarding of agricultural land is no more. We can cover over and lose for ever our natural capital for producing food. Surely, this is short-sighted in the extreme!

Second, field observations by geographers over many years have charted the continuing erosion of soil. This is prevalent on autumn-sown crops and on ploughed land. The soil is left bare during the winter season when wind and rain have the most erosive effects. The loss rates are greater than the natural formation rates. So, there is cumulative net loss of good quality soil. Changes to patterns and timing of cultivation could considerably help to reduce the loss of soil. Why is this not happening? Simply because there are no incentives for farmers to change their practices and no inhibitions placed on them to act differently. Put simply, the current agricultural support regime is focused primarily on producing food today without thinking about the capacity of the land to produce food in the future.

Third, the concept of ‘natural capital’ is not at the heart of agricultural policy and practice. The soil, as a growth medium, is an essential component of the physical and biological capital of our country, produced naturally, which can be used over generations to produce nutritious food for

© James Hutton Institute

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Farmland restoration edited by Paul Hawken, Executive Director, Project Drawdown

Around the world, farmers are walking away from lands that were once cultivated or grazed because those lands have been ‘farmed out’. Agricultural practices depleted fertility, eroded soil, caused compaction, drained groundwater, or created salinity by over-irrigation. Because the lands no longer generate sufficient income, they are abandoned. Other contributing causes include a changing climate, desertification as in China and the Sahel in Africa, and the results of farming on fragile, steeply sloped land. On the socio-economic side there is migration, the lure of higher income in cities, lack of market access, and high production costs for smallholders when competing with industrial agriculture. Whatever the case, for many, it is cheaper to walk away from the land than to work it.

These abandoned lands are not lying fallow; they are forgotten.

Measuring how extensive they are and how quickly they are growing is complex, and different approaches yield different numbers. A comprehensive study out of Stanford University estimates that there are 950 million to 1.1 billion acres of deserted farmland around the world – acreage once used for crops or pasture that has not been restored as forest or converted to development. Ninety-nine percent of that abandonment occurred in the past century.

The quantity of forsaken lands continues to grow, even as the world strains to create more food. To feed a growing population and protect forests from deforestation for fresh farmland, restoring abandoned cropland and pastureland to health and long-term productivity is key. Bringing abandoned lands back into productive use can also turn them into carbon sinks. Like an empty bowl, degraded land can theoretically take up more carbon than fertile ground, as plants draw carbon from the atmosphere and send it back into depleted soils. Where soils are left to erode and diminish further, abandoned farmlands can be a source of greenhouse gas emissions. According to Professor Rattan Lal of the Ohio State University, the world’s cultivated soils have lost 5070% of their original carbon stock, which combines with oxygen in the air to become carbon dioxide.

Restoration can mean the return of native vegetation, the establishment of tree plantations, or the introduction of regenerative farming methods. In general, the more degraded

“The world’s abandoned farmland offers an opportunity to improve food security, farmers’ livelihoods, ecosystem health, and carbon drawdown simultaneously.”

the land, the more intensive the restoration efforts initially need to be. In less extreme cases, simply allowing natural processes to play out over time – passive restoration – will return the land to a healthy ecosystem. Passive approaches require little money but lots of time. Active restoration is often labour intensive, yet necessary for cultivation to revive. Its costs are higher, but so is its speed to productivity, carbon storage, and ecosystem services.

The two strategies need not be mutually exclusive; combining them can aid cost-effectiveness.

Presently, there are few financial incentives to induce farmland restoration. Costs are not inconsequential, and because change is slow, returns on investment lag. For this solution to take root, formal schemes to finance regeneration will be a necessary stimulus to action, helping landowners make changes without (sometimes literally) having to bet the farm. The world’s abandoned farmland offers an opportunity to improve food security, farmers’ livelihoods, ecosystem health, and carbon drawdown simultaneously. Lal estimates that farmland soils could reabsorb 88 billion to 110 billion tons of carbon, all the while enhancing tilth, fertility, biodiversity, and the water cycle.

The default mode of all land is regeneration. That can be a slow process, but in the hands of skilled practitioners, the economic, social, and ecological benefits of farmland restoration can be greatly accelerated. At the moment, too much former farmland is something someone, for some reason, has abandoned – figuratively thrown away. The world, and many generations of farmers to come, would reap rewards from restoring and reactivating these neglected terrestrial assets.

IMPACT: Currently, one billion acres of farmland have been abandoned due to land degradation. We estimate that by 2050 424 million acres could be restored and converted to regenerative agriculture, or other productive, carbon-friendly farming systems, for a combined emissions impact of 14.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide. This solution could provide a financial return of $1.3 trillion over three decades on an investment of $72 billion, while producing an additional 9.5 billion tons of food.

This article has been extracted with permission from Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming, edited by Paul Hawken.

16 SUMMER 2018

Slow Food: good, clean and fair for all Bob Donald, Slow Food Aberdeen City & Shire

In the late 1980s Carlo Petrini, an Italian food activist, was upset at another fast-food outlet opening near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Determined that his country’s wonderful food heritage and traditions weren’t going to be eroded by the growing rise of multinational operations, Carlo offered everyone in the queue the opportunity to join him in a bowl of penne pasta. So began the Slow Food movement – a drive to maintain local culture and conviviality by eating together and celebrating food that is good (tasty and flavoursome, natural, seasonal and local), clean (produced without the aid of pesticides, hormones or the commercial planting of GMOs) and fair (a fair price and conditions for all concerned, from production to consumption).

From humble beginnings, Slow Food today has over 100,000 members in more than 150 countries, with a network of projects, programmes and events held at local, regional and national levels. Slow Food Scotland consists of several

groups (convivia) located throughout the country, who bring together food enthusiasts to promote the values of Slow Food, campaign on issues that impact our food system, and enjoy each other’s company in big-table dining events featuring our great Scottish produce.

One of the main programmes is the Ark of Taste, which aims to ensure that producers, farmers, fishermen and artisans are supported, by drawing attention to products and processes at danger of being lost. The programme preserves our endangered foods for reasons of taste, biodiversity and culture. In Scotland there are over 50 items in the Ark, with reestit mutton, beremeal and the honey of the native black bee examples of the diversity that the Ark is seeking to protect. Worldwide this list extends to in excess of 4,700.

But it is not only the identification of Ark items that is important; people need to be aware of what to do with them.

The Chefs Alliance in Slow Food Scotland consists of a group of chefs, cooks and restaurant owners who are dedicated to the principles of the movement, using local and seasonal produce from small-scale producers to promote good quality local and sustainably produced food. It also encourages the use of Ark products and the highest standards of sustainable culinary excellence. As Neil Forbes of Cafe St Honoré in Edinburgh puts it, “Being a member of the Slow Food Chef Alliance gives me the opportunity to tell the incredible story of why I do what I do.”

With 2018 being the Year of Young People in Scotland, the Slow Food Youth Network Scotland (SFYN) is led by young citizens aged 18-35 and focuses on engaging, promoting and empowering them to make responsible food choices and lead the way in creating a more sustainable food future for Scotland. As well as connecting and promoting young people and organisations that are aspiring to or are already making sustainable changes in our food system, SFYN aims to empower young people experiencing social disadvantage to have the knowledge and confidence in choosing what is on their plate, in the fields and in the media, by giving them a voice in the food system at a local, national and international level, as well as providing access to employment opportunities in that food system.

“A drive to maintain local culture and conviviality by eating together and celebrating food that is good, clean and fair.”

Food education of school children is also key to the movement’s principles. The Taste Adventure is an activity that enables children to discover the excitement of food by visiting interactive zones, each of which focuses on one of the five senses. They receive a passport and collect stamps as they make new food discoveries. Using each of their senses in a fun and enjoyable way will hopefully encourage children to take an interest in what they eat, and improve the eating habits of future generations.

The symbol of Slow Food is the snail. It was chosen not only because it is a culinary delicacy from Bra, the Italian hometown of Carlo Petrini, but because it moves slowly and calmly and eats its way through life. If Slow Food embodies the idea of living an unhurried life, what better place to start than at the table?

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The Third Plate Dan Barber, chef and former member of US President Obama’s Council on Physical Fitness, Sports and Nutrition

What we refer to as the beginning and end of the food chain a field on a farm at one end, a plate of food at the other isn’t really a chain at all. The food chain is actually more like a set of Olympic rings. They all hang together. Which is how I came to understand that the right kind of cooking and the right kind of farming are one and the same. Our belief that we can create a sustainable diet for ourselves by cherry‑picking great ingredients is wrong. Because it’s too narrow‑minded. We can’t think about changing parts of our system. We need to think about redesigning the system.

“What we eat is part of an integrated whole, a web of relationships, that cannot be reduced to single ingredients.”

A good place to start is with a new conception of a plate of food, a Third Plate, which is less a ‘plate’, per se, than a different way of cooking, or assembling a dish, or writing a menu, or sourcing ingredients, or really all these things.

It combines tastes not based on convention, but because they fit together to support the environment that produced them. The Third Plate goes beyond raising awareness about the importance of farmers and sustainable agriculture. It helps us recognize that what we eat is part of an integrated whole, a web of relationships, that cannot be reduced to single ingredients. It champions a whole class of integral, yet uncelebrated, crops and cuts of meat that is required to produce the most delicious food. Like all great cuisines, it is constantly in flux, evolving to reflect the best of what nature can offer.

And its realization will rely, at least in part, on chefs. They will play a leading role, similar to that of a musical conductor.

The chef as conductor is an easy comparison: we stand at the front of the kitchen, cueing the orchestra, cajoling and negotiating, assembling disparate elements into something complete. I’m not the first to make the association. And yet there’s a deeper, more interesting level of work related to the job of conducting, and it may inform the role of the chef for the future. This is the behind‑the‑scenes work, the preconcert study that investigates the history of the composition, its meaning and context. Once that’s been determined, a narrative takes hold, and the job of the conductor is to interpret that story through the music. One could say that a cuisine is to a chef what a musical score is to a conductor. It offers the guidelines for the creation of something immediate a concert, a meal that will also ultimately be woven into the fabric of memory.

© Peden Munk

Today’s food culture has given chefs a platform of influence, including the power, if not the luxury, to innovate. As arbiters of taste, we can help inspire a Third Plate, a new way of eating that puts it all together.

That’s a tall order for any chef, not to mention eaters, but it’s an intuitive one as well. Because, as the stories in this book suggest, it always takes the shape of delicious food. Truly great flavour the kind that produces plain old jaw‑dropping wonder is a powerful lens into the natural world because taste breaks through the delicate things we can’t see or perceive.

Taste is a soothsayer, a truth teller. And it can be a guide in reimagining our food system, and our diets, from the ground up.

© Ingrid Hofstra

Blue Hill Farm cow. © Jen Munkvold

Dan Barber is the Chef of Blue Hill, a restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, located within a nonprofit farm and education centre. His opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in the New York Times and many other publications. This article is copyright © 2014 Author, extracted from The Third Plate by Dan Barber, published by Abacus at RRP £10.99. See back page for details and for our Reader Offer.

18 SUMMER 2018

Solar Impulse: inspiring change Mike Robinson, Chief Executive, RSGS

Breitling Orbiter 3, initiated the Solar Impulse Since the RSGS was founded, our role has challenge to demonstrate the immense been to draw on the best expertise available potential of renewable energies. Borschberg to inform and inspire people, and to promote converted the vision and develop answers to the most critical of a solar aeroplane geographical issues. It was with great delight, into reality by building up the technical team, therefore, that at a special event held at leading the design, construction and test of ScottishPower’s headquarters in Glasgow in two prototypes, and organizing flight missions.

May, we presented our Mungo Park Medal to Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, The frame of Solar Impulse was made the pilots of Solar Impulse – the first aircraft predominantly out of ultra-lightweight to circumnavigate the globe without fuel, materials such as carbon fibre and innovative travelling 40,000km using only the sun’s ‘honeycomb sandwich panels’. It has a © Solar Impulse | Revillard | Rezo.ch energy to power its motors. Beginning in Abu wingspan of 72m, multiple lithium polymer Dhabi in March 2015, Solar Impulse flew eastwards across India, batteries to store energy for flight at night, and a small 3.8m2 China and Japan, before taking on the mighty Pacific Ocean to cockpit which allowed the pilots to fly the plane one at a time.

Hawaii. From there, the plane crossed the breadth of mainland The 17,248 monocrystalline silicon solar cells created enough USA, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and North Africa, before energy for an average cruising speed of 43mph. returning to Abu Dhabi in July 2016.

Keith Anderson, CEO of ScottishPower, said, But the innovative around-the-world flight “What Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg was much more than mere adventure. Solar achieved using the power of natural resources Impulse, an idea born in Switzerland, was a is astonishing. There are lots of parallels with platform to challenge the boundaries of what the challenges ScottishPower face, as we seek is possible, to demonstrate the power of new and innovative ways of generating green renewable energies, and to promote the use of electricity and making our networks smarter. clean technological solutions on the ground.

There was a lot to learn from Bertrand and It has become an inspiration for people the André, and they have inspired ideas that we world over, and sends a powerful message to hope to develop across our business.” encourage businesses, politicians, scientists Piccard has become an influential voice as and leaders to help bring about the systemic a forward-thinking leader for progress and changes that we need to find solutions to sustainability. Appointed Champion of the climate change and make our world more Earth in 2012, he is also a UN Goodwill sustainable.

Ambassador for the Environment. He At the medal presentation event, RSGS Board member Dr Vanessa Collingridge interviewed the two pilots about the development of the project and about their epic journey. Piccard, who made history by accomplishing the first non-stop around-the world balloon flight on board

© Solar Impulse | Chammartin

explained, “The success of Solar Impulse is only useful if we take it further. My goal is now to select 1,000 solutions to protect the environment in a profitable way and encourage governments to have more ambitious environmental targets and energy policies.”

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“‘When explorers speak about the world, and about the Earth, they are credible because they have seen it.’”

Borschberg has led the evolution of aviation technology into new, energy-efficient solutions that will transform a number of industries. In response to joining the distinguished list of former Mungo Park Medal recipients, he said, “I have to say, on an emotional note, that when I received your invitation to come here to Scotland and have the honour to receive this Medal, I can really tell you that I immediately thought, ‘I have to find a way to make it possible. I have to find the date, simply so that we can both come here.’ Because I have a great respect for this country.”

Piccard summed up the inspirational ethos behind Solar Impulse: “I think the best way to say thank you is to say how touched we are as promoters of an aviation project to be rewarded by a geographic society. Because Solar Impulse has not only gone around the Earth, but it tries to protect the Earth. And I think this is the task of the explorers: it’s not just to explore, but today it’s to bring this message to key decision leaders, and opinion leaders. Because when explorers speak about the world, and about the Earth, they are credible because they have seen it. When explorers speak about life, they are credible because they risk their life. When explorers speak about people, they are credible because they know what a team is. So, I believe that we should never waste an opportunity to promote this message of having a better world, and showing to the people who rule this world that they have to become explorers also.”

© Chris James Main images: fourth test flight, Abu Dhabi, February 2015. © Olga Stefatou

© Solar Impulse | Revillard | Rezo.ch

20 SUMMER 2018

Food poverty: a church perspective Martin Johnstone, Secretary, Church of Scotland’s Church & Society Council

Go into any supermarket these days and you will invariably see a box, trolley or basket with a sign requesting donations for the local food bank. The latest figures from Trussell Trust indicate that in the year to the end of March 2018, 170,625 people received a three-day food parcel. In March 2013 that figure was 14,332. That represents an almost 12-fold increase in six years.

These figures, appalling though they are, don’t even begin to tell the whole story. In Scotland, Trussell Trust is responsible for less than 50% of food banks. We also know that many people either choose not to visit a food bank – “I would rather crawl backwards over broken glass than suffer the indignity,” one friend told me – or are unable to access one. Food banks aren’t open every day and, although widespread, they don’t exist in every community.

Food banks fulfil an important emergency function, but they are in imminent danger of becoming a core part of how we deal with food poverty in this country as they already are in countries such as Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Indeed, there are those who would say that, in a few short years, this has already happened.

Food poverty is a misnomer. In Scotland we do not have a shortage of food, although there are areas where fresh food is not accessible and other foods are disproportionately expensive. We also throw away vast quantities of food, much of it before it ever reaches our shops.

pillars of dignity and respect is to be warmly welcomed. But this will take more than words. It will involve ensuring that those who currently have least have more money in their pockets, alongside increased opportunities to buy affordable, accessible, high-quality food.

There are important opportunities for that sharing of food to be a community activity. In the Gorbals, for example, there is a weekly community lunch hosted by Bridging the Gap. Upwards of a hundred people from different walks of life and a myriad of nationalities come together to cook, eat and share. Such gatherings, being replicated across the country, will play an important part in tackling food insecurity and hunger. They are providing community as well as nourishment. We know that sharing food helps to foster community. There is also a need for communities to make food.

Looking beyond the current crisis being created by the grossly unequal distribution of money which is the primary driver of food poverty today, climate change is likely to force us to change the food we eat. More food will need to be grown and distributed locally. The development of an inclusive food movement which deliberately prioritises those who are struggling against poverty will be vital if the levels of food poverty are to reduce in the long term.

What we have, however, is a shortage of money for a growing number of people to be able to buy the food that they and their families require.

The causes for that are complex but there is a clear correlation between austerity and, in particular, cuts in the benefits (or social security) system and increases in levels of food poverty. Delays in benefit payments and changes to benefits account for over two-fifths of the people who accessed a Trussell Trust food bank last year. Low income, primarily caused by the fact that the real value of benefits has stagnated over recent years, accounted for an additional quarter.

“We need to address the amount of money that individuals and families have in their pockets.”

If we seriously want to tackle the current issue of food poverty and insecurity in Scotland, we need to address the amount of money that individuals and families have in their A Thursday lunch at Bridging the Gap, a charity based in the Gorbals, Glasgow. pockets. Much of the responsibility for that rests with the Department of Work and Pensions based in Westminster, but with the advent Martin Johnstone helps to facilitate a growing network of a new social security agency being based in Scotland of Poverty Truth Commissions across the UK. He chaired there are important opportunities for the Scottish Parliament the 2016 Independent Working Group on Food Poverty on to grasp. The commitment to build that new system on the behalf of the Scottish Government.

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Reversing food poverty in Scotland Deborah Hay, Scotland Policy Officer, Joseph Rowntree Foundation

How can it be right that, in a country as wealthy and abundant as Scotland, people are going hungry? How widespread is the problem and what can be done?

As a nation, rightly, we are proud of our food and drink: exports were worth £6 billion to the Scottish economy last year, an increase of 9%; and sales of luxury Scottish salmon and whisky are recognised as best in class all over the world.

By contrast, while we are poised to consider enshrining a ‘Right to Food’ in Scottish legislation, food bank use across the UK increased by 13% last year.

In 2017-18 the Trussell Trust handed out 1.3m emergency three-day food parcels across the UK, 170,625 of them in Scotland. You can’t just walk in – people are referred by a trusted, local organisation – so published figures are likely to understate the extent of the crisis.

Case study work has confirmed food banks are not reaching a significant proportion of those who struggle to afford food.

before Universal Credit is reduced. Our analysis suggests that working lone parents on low incomes were £1,600 a year worse off in real terms in 2015-16 than they were in 2010-11; and families with two children, with both parents working at minimum wage (National Living Wage), were £521 worse off, the equivalent of seven weekly food shops.

Food poverty in Scotland is fundamentally about poverty: one million adults and children lack the incomes to meet their needs adequately. In a wealthy and compassionate society, we need to loosen the grip of poverty. It is costly and damaging, but also a challenge that can be solved.

“Support for those in and out of work should offer protection against poverty, and clear pathways to securing a better future.”

After the 2007-08 global credit crunch, the Trussell Trust anticipated that a shortterm spike in crisis and hunger might follow, but even they are shocked by demand. Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) describes three principal drivers: 1) a benefits safety net with too many holes in it; 2) the rising costs of essentials, including housing; and 3) a jobs market that doesn’t offer the hours or wages that families need to make ends meet.

Currently, for households on the lowest incomes, rising costs (especially housing, energy and food) have left many families with insufficient funds to cover even the basics. Food banks have seen demand soar for non-food basic items, such as soap, shampoo, cleaning and sanitary products.

In the social security system, a tougher conditionality regime, design flaws in Universal Credit, and administration issues mean significant numbers of people both in and out of work face delays, errors and benefit sanctions, leaving those on the lowest incomes with even less for periods ranging from four weeks to three years. Research confirms that the top three reasons people are referred to food banks are low income, benefit delays, and benefit changes (including sanctions), and that areas where Universal Credit has been rolled out fully show a much higher increase in food bank referrals (52% increase, compared with 13% in areas without full rollout).

To be effective, JRF believe support for those in and out of work should offer protection against poverty, and clear pathways to securing a better future. There are reasons to be hopeful.

The Scottish Parliament has agreed, on a cross-party basis, to reverse the upward trend of child poverty. The new Income Supplement for families proposed in the Scottish Government’s Child Poverty Delivery Plan could make a substantial difference. Steps to help parents into work, and to progress into better jobs with improved prospects, are being designed. The Scottish Welfare Fund provides a safety net for people who face a financial crisis. And new rules in the private rented sector could help to reduce the flow into homelessness due to a tenancy ending, which is causing so much damage in England.

These will take time to work.

Fixing Universal Credit quickly and ending the UK benefits freeze are the two most significant changes needed if we are to see food bank use falling consistently. Of course, this won’t solve all food injustice: I haven’t even mentioned broader health inequalities. But it would help to remove a national badge of shame, with food bank use becoming an emergency response once again for fewer households.

We also know that some key groups are particularly vulnerable to needing food banks: young, single men; lone parents with dependent children; and households where there is an illness or disability. Half of all food bank users are families with dependent children, many of whom are working.

Incomes for working families have been eroded by rising costs, wage stagnation, freezes on benefit rates. and changes that reduce how much families can keep of what they earn,

Number of three-day emergency food supplies given by Trussell Trust foodbanks.

Data from The Trussell Trust.

22 SUMMER 2018

Ensuring a sustainable food supply Professor Rachel Norman, Chair in Food Security & Sustainability, University of Stirling

There are a number of issues that are expected to put pressure on the global food system over the next 30+ years.

The global population is expected to grow from its current level of 7 billion to 9.7 billion by 2050. That growth is not expected to be evenly distributed, with the populations in developed countries remaining relatively steady whilst populations in India, China and Africa are expected to more than double.

At the same time, people are getting wealthier and middle class consumption is expected to increase, which will mean that there is more demand for meat, especially beef, and for more processed foods. Taken together this means that the demand for food is expected to double by 2050, whilst climate change means that the food that we currently produce could be under threat. Whilst it might be possible to adapt our farming to slow climate change, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and can damage both the food we produce and our transport infrastructure. The recent example of the ‘Beast from the East’ demonstrated how sensitive our supply chains are, with fresh produce quickly disappearing from supermarket shelves, and milk, for example, going to waste on farms which were inaccessible.

of the lost food but in the environmental costs of growing, processing and transportation which have also been ‘wasted’.

Sustainable nutrition is an area of real promise because it is a win-win situation. This is an approach which means that instead of trying to meet predicted demands, we try to reduce those demands and focus on ensuring that people eat a more healthy and less environmentally damaging diet. The fact is that, on average, the foods that are more environmentally friendly to produce (ie, fruit and vegetables) are better for our health, and in a world where an obesity crisis is looming this is an important consideration.

The food and drink industry is hugely important to the Scottish Government: “It creates jobs and wealth, impacts on health and sustainability, and helps attract people to the country.” They are therefore planning to implement a Good Food Nation policy. They define a Good Food Nation as one “where people from every walk of life take pride, pleasure and benefit from the food that they buy, serve and eat day by day.” This vision includes the idea that everyone in Scotland will have access to healthy and nutritious food, that this food will be produced in an environmentally sound way, and that the food industry will thrive. The Scottish Food Commission recently submitted its recommendations for the proposed Good Food Nation Bill which will be a cross-cutting piece of legislation. Fergus Ewing is the MSP in charge of the bill and he said, “work on shaping the course of the bill will involve colleagues and stakeholders in a number of areas across Government, including health, food standards, waste, social justice, agriculture, education and procurement.” These recommendations are currently being considered with a view to a consultation being held this year.

“Using the food we already produce more efficiently would go a significant way to meeting the expected demand.”

There is no single solution to these problems. Traditionally a lot of attention has been paid to increasing production, and sustainable intensification. This may well be appropriate in countries where yields are currently low, but it is not clear that we really need more production – even if that could be done whilst minimising the impact on the environment and biodiversity. In fact, using the food we already produce more efficiently would go a significant way to meeting the expected demand. Two important areas of focus are therefore waste reduction and a move towards sustainable nutrition.

Waste occurs all along the food supply chain from farm to fork; where the waste occurs depends on where you are in the world. In North America and Europe there is significantly more waste at the consumption stage than in other regions.

According to figures from Greener Scotland, food thrown out whole or unopened costs the average household in Scotland over £128 a year. The issues are not just in the financial cost

The 1996 World Food Summit coined the following definition: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” The proposals to make Scotland a Good Food Nation are challenging and ambitious, and I am sure they will meet resistance from some quarters, but they would go a long way to ensuring food security in Scotland.

The

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SUMMER 2018

Climate change and obesity Professor Jennie Macdiarmid, Professor in Sustainable Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen

The global food system is unsustainable; it is damaging the environment and causing many health problems. The food we are choosing to eat is contributing to climate change and putting considerable stress on the planet’s finite natural resources, such as land and water. Approximately 20-30% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system, and while we can’t eliminate all emissions we can reduce them significantly by changing what we eat and how it is produced.

At the same time, obesity is a major health problem; it has tripled since 1975 and approximately 1.9 billion adults in the world today are overweight or obese.

Changing our eating habits to diets that are healthier and have a low environmental impact is key. The concept of healthy and environmentally sustainable diets has been around for decades but it has not gained much traction until now. The urgent need to tackle climate change and future food security has brought it back to life. A vision of Scotland’s Good Food Nation policy is to have a country where “dietaryrelated diseases and the environmental impact of our food consumption are in decline.” To achieve this we need a diverse range of expertise to come together to take action, identifying co-benefits, and to avoid any unintended consequences. For example, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with sugar production is low compared with other foods, but we don’t want to recommend people eat more sugar.

greenhouse gas emissions, land and water usage.

Environmentally-friendly diets therefore are focused on eating less meat and dairy products. While this has some cobenefits for health, through a nutrition lens a small amount of meat can provide an easy source of iron and zinc. The idea of reducing meat consumption, however, has been met with a lot of resistance because people like to eat it and it plays an important role in our food culture. There is also the misconception that we will become protein deficient without meat, but this is not the case. The UK population consumes about twice as much protein as we need, and excluding meat there is still enough.

“Food waste has an enormous environmental impact and is a threat to future food security.”

We know that, in general, livestock production has the greatest environmental impact of food commodities, with high

Meat has dominated the debates, but what about other things we eat? One issue with livestock production is the land used for animal feed. Using this argument, should we stop consuming foods that have virtually no nutritional value, such as tea, coffee and alcohol, and which would free up land we need to produce nutritious food to feed a growing population?

If we are only concerned about nutrition, health and the environment, these foods are unnecessary. Can you imagine the outcry if this was proposed? These are central to our social and cultural habits, and we can’t lose sight of the fact that food is intertwined in our social lives. We don’t just eat to ‘sustain life’; we eat food for pleasure, we use it to express our identity, we form views of others by what they eat, and we conform to social norms.

Returning to the issue of climate change and obesity, we know food waste has an enormous environmental impact and is a threat to future food security. Globally, a third of the food produced is never eaten, and UK households throw away 4.4 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten a year.

Great efforts are being made to reduce waste, but is there a synergy with obesity, is overconsumption another form of food waste? Eating more than we need over an extended period can cause obesity, but we often forget the environmental cost of producing and eating more food than we need. This is just one example of where we need joined-up thinking.

These examples illustrate the complexity of what we are facing, but change is possible. We need to bring together people from different areas of expertise and sectors to find solutions. We need to step outside our comfort zones, stop working in silos, and start to have conversations with different people. This is starting to happen, but the pace needs to pick up as the time to act is running out to create a world with a sustainable food system.

24 SUMMER 2018

My good food nation Carina Contini, Contini Italian & Scottish Restaurants, Edinburgh

A ‘good food nation’ for me in my youth was one filled with donuts; raspberry jam or custard preferably. Why? Because donuts – no ordinary donuts, only great handmade donuts – were a treat. It was a once or twice a year occurrence.

Our treats have become daily instead of annual. We’re spoiled and indulged with the good (you can buy anything almost anytime from supermarkets or over the internet), the bad (processed food), and the ugly (ultra-processed food), and we’ve become confused by very clever marketing and packaging as to what good food actually is. And because we may never have been taught what ‘good’ is, we don’t know the difference.

My firstborn very unfortunately had severe food allergies as a child. This has changed my principled view in some areas of food.

Fish, chicken, kiwi, apple, nuts, to name a few, caused extreme reactions when he was little. It caused mayhem everywhere. It was a nightmare trying to feed him and two other babies and run a business. I found myself compensating with loads of milk and loads of treats out of desperation. I have much sympathy for challenging eating needs.

“The difference then to now was much smaller portions.”

In my adult life, good food has been ‘food in season’, with an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit. Five to six portions of fruit and vegetables isn’t unusual for my dinner, but I struggle to get my younger children up to the minimum five-a-day. Usually because of a very tight school routine with long days that seem to need carbohydrates to sustain them.

I come from a family of foodies. Every celebration and occasion revolved around food and lots of it. And always the best. We may never have had a family holiday but we ate so very well. My mother, the cook for our family business, also had to feed her eight children and an entourage of helpers. Every dinner time was three courses. Always soup, a stew or pie, and a pudding.

The difference then to now was much smaller portions. But always homemade. I tend to cook one dish with a salad followed by fruit, but the main dish seems massive in comparison to my mother’s portions. Even my mother’s crockery, which is still in use 67 years after the wedding day, is much smaller than any of my dishes. Our upsizing post-war hasn’t served us well.

School meals at my local Cockenzie Primary School in the 1970s were served by the children in tables of eight with at least two hot courses. I remember each dish with fond memories. Yes there was pink custard and chocolate pudding, but it was served by the P7s to the younger children, eaten together, and the dishes were cleared and the table wiped to help the school cooks. It was civilised, it was healthy, it was cooked on the premises, it had a sense of community, and it was disciplined. There wasn’t a choice! You ate what was there or you left it. With an apple for a morning snack there was very little that was ever left at lunch.

Thankfully now at over six foot he has a love of spinach and steak, and sweets are mostly an afterthought as the health and fitness drive and marketing aimed at teenage boys (even more than girls) is working for him.

Time is ultimately the killer to a good food nation. You need time to shop for fresh ingredients, and you need time to prepare and time to cook, and most of all, time to enjoy. Our Slow Food values are key to a good food nation. Their take is “good clean fair” food.

Food that is good for the producers, the environment, and all the way through to the consumers.

Time is also needed to share skills and hand them down to the next generation. It’s interesting how more gadgets and modern domestic appliances which were supposed to give households more time have simply fed a consumer drive that leaves us having to work harder and ultimately have less time for ourselves and less time to share with our families.

In my ideal good food nation, I would: • make childcare cheaper so parents can go back to work and provide for their families; • take the stigma away from bottle feeding as some mothers simply can’t feed their babies; • ban all pre-jarred baby food as it alters children’s palates from an early age and confuses their sense of taste; • provide free school meals all the way through primary and secondary education, paid for by taxing the supermarkets and processed food industry; • make sure you can’t leave school unless you know how to cook the basics; • remove the stigma of salt, a vital ingredient when cooking; • subsidise local vegetables and fruit – fresh produce is expensive to grow and to store, so it has to be supported.

Ultimately we have to make choices. Historically in Italy they spend more of their disposable income on food than we have.

They don’t need to spend a few thousand pounds for that family holiday in the sun, so it is a very different situation, but historically they haven’t had the house price boom that has led to less disposable income here in the UK so we have less to spend on the basics. The tax system in Italy on fresh food and restaurant food is far lower than in the UK. This also allows people to buy and to eat more good food. Italy is not the nirvana of a good food nation, but thanks to sunshine and a largely agriculture-led rural economy, access to good food is much closer.

We can’t have a good food nation with a broken housing system and uneducated and undernourished children. We have some difficult choices to make. Italy doesn’t have all the answers, but they do make amazing donuts!

The

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SUMMER 2018

Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes Professor M Arantxa Colchero, National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia; Professor Shu Wen Ng, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, despite being at different levels of economic development, are all facing high burdens of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. In Mexico, overweightness and obesity reached 70% of adults and 30% of children in 2012, and diabetes is among the leading causes of death among adults. In the UK, 66% of men, 57% of women, and 34% of 10-11 year olds were overweight or obese in 2016.

Meanwhile, national surveys in the US found that the prevalence of overweightness and obesity among adults was 71% in 2014, with obesity at the highest rates ever seen at 40% by 2016.

Although NCDs are caused by multiple factors, systematic reviews and meta-analysis across the globe have shown that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) leads to weight gain and diabetes. Additionally, the World Health Organization has identified taxation of SSBs as one of the ‘best buys’ to address unhealthy diets, and recommends such policies.

found that people reported being 38% less likely to consume regular sodas within a 30-day period compared to prior to the tax being implemented, and 58% higher odds of consuming bottled water daily since the tax.

While the beverage industry claimed that the tax would lower employment rates in economic sectors associated with the production and distribution of SSBs, independent studies using public data in all three locations did not find any evidence of this, and in fact found small employment gains.

Despite, or rather because of the evidence to date from these locations showing that such taxes can discourage the consumption of unhealthy beverages, lobby groups against such taxes have been active. The future of the current taxes in Mexico and Philadelphia are uncertain. In Mexico, general elections are scheduled for July 2018 and it is unknown whether the elected party will maintain and strengthen this policy. Meanwhile, a bill to pre-empt or prohibit food or beverage taxes in the state of Pennsylvania has been proposed in the Pennsylvanian state legislature, and similar efforts are occurring in other US states.

“The WHO has identified taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages as one of the ‘best buys’ to address unhealthy diets.”

In this context, the Mexican government introduced an excise tax of one peso per litre (about a 10% price increase) to all non-alcoholic beverages with added sugars, excluding beverages with artificial sweeteners and 100% juices, in 2014. Meanwhile, a tiered, sugar-content based Soft Drink Industry Levy designed to encourage industry to reformulate their drinks was implemented in the UK starting on 6th April 2018, where beverages with 5-8g of sugar per 100ml would be subject to a 18p per litre tax, and those with more than 8g of sugar per 100ml would be subject to a 24p per litre tax.

In the US, seven localities have also implemented sweetened beverage taxes in the range of 1-2 cents per ounce. All taxes are levied on and collected from manufacturers or distributors.

To date, independent peer-reviewed and published evaluations exist for Mexico, Berkeley (California, US) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, US). There are ongoing evaluations being conducted in the UK and the various localities in the US. Results from the Mexican evaluation showed that in urban areas, the one peso per litre tax was associated with a 6% reduction in household purchases of taxed beverages in 2014, and 9.7% the second year of implementation. Reductions were higher for the lowest socio-economic households, in urban areas, and in households with children and adolescents. The evidence suggests that households are substituting bottled water and other untaxed beverages, whose sales have increased. Similarly in Berkeley, the one cent per ounce tax was found to lower intakes of SSBs by 21%, while the intakes of bottled waters rose 16%. A recent study on beverage consumption among Philadelphia residents two months after their 1.5 cent per ounce tax was implemented

Lessons from existing taxes to date can inform on improvements to existing and future fiscal policies to enhance their effectiveness in lowering unhealthy beverage intake and the sugar content of these products. For example, the Mexican experience suggests that specific excises need to adjust for inflation annually, and the tax revenue should be earmarked to compensate for potential losses, particularly if a fiscal policy is regressive despite the potential health benefits on the poorest. Berkeley and Philadelphia are doing this by directing the tax revenue towards community projects, social programmes and pre-kindergarten education. Meanwhile, the UK tax design is the first tiered, sugarcontent based policy, and will provide useful insights as to how the beverage industry may be incentivized to lower the sugar content of their products.

Finally, while tax policies hold promise in helping tackle the NCD epidemic (as it has in the case of tobacco), they should not be expected to be a panacea. A comprehensive package of interventions to tackle NCDs, including public education campaigns, labelling regulations to empower consumers to make more informed choices, and limiting children’s exposure to unhealthy beverage and food marketing, is needed to work in concert. All these strategies should go through process and impact evaluations to allow for enhancement to maximize their effectiveness in discouraging unhealthy food offerings and choices, and thus gradually improve the public’s health.

26 SUMMER 2018

Scotland’s forgotten carbon Craig Smeaton, Research Fellow, University of St Andrews

The ever-increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing widespread climate and environmental change, ranging from increases in temperature and storminess to ocean acidification and the loss of biodiversity. The natural environment has the ability to regulate the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by locking it away in carbon stores such as trees, soils and sediments. Therefore you would think that the location, size and rate that these carbon stores lock carbon away would be well understood. In the world’s soils and forests this is largely true, but we are constantly discovering new carbon stores such as the Amazonian and Congo peatlands. Yet in comparison the world’s oceans, more specifically coastal seas, have been largely overlooked but are potentially globally significant sites for carbon storage.

Though Scotland is a relatively small country, our natural environment stores significant quantities of carbon. The best known of these stores is the peatlands which are estimated to store 1,620 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon, which represents 50% of the United Kingdom’s soil-carbon stock but, as with our understanding of carbon globally, we know very little about carbon stored within our seas. When you consider the restrictive geomorphological nature of the west coast of Scotland, the glacially over-deepened sea lochs are ideally suited to trap sediment and carbon.

“Carbon held within Scotland’s coastal marine sediments is of national significance.”

Globally, fjordic systems such as the sea lochs have be shown to be ‘hotspots’ for the burial of carbon within sediment, but there has been a lack of methodology to calculate the total carbon stored within such sediments. Unlike terrestrial systems such as the peatlands, the sediments sit under significant depth of water; therefore, a number of normally unassociated disciplines were brought together to tackle

this problem. Using Loch Sunart as a natural laboratory, a new method of measuring carbon stocks was developed: seismic geophysics were used to determine the depth of the sediment which in places was >70m; this was combined with geochemical analysis of sediment cores collected from the loch. Using these techniques it was estimated that the sediments within Loch Sunart hold 11.5Mt of organic carbon and 15Mt of inorganic carbon (shelly material); this was the first full carbon stock estimate for coastal sediment anywhere in the world.

Loch Sunart is one of Scotland’s 111 large fjords. To understand the national stock of sedimentary carbon held within these systems, the new methodological approach was used on all the sea lochs which had both seismic geophysical data and sediment cores available for analysis. This included Lochs Creran, Etive and Broom, and Little Loch Broom.

Through the combination of these detailed carbon stock estimates produced for each of the five lochs, and the data on the physical characteristics of all 111 fjords, an upscaling approach was developed. Using this approach it has been estimated that the sediment in Scotland’s 111 fjords hold 296Mt of organic carbon and 345Mt of inorganic carbon.

To put this in context, the sea loch sediments hold just over one-third the carbon held in Scotland’s peatlands, but when you compare the areas of the two environments, though the peat will have a greater carbon density, the extreme depth of the sediments mean the sediments hold significantly more carbon per m2.

Scotland is now the only country to have an estimate of the carbon stored in its coastal sediments. Through quantifying this store it has been shown that carbon held within Scotland’s coastal marine sediments is of national significance and rivals that of the important peatlands, and like the peatlands the sediments require and deserve protection.

FURTHER READING

Smeaton C, Austin WEN, Davies AL, Baltzer A, Abell RE, Howe JA (2016) Substantial stores of sedimentary carbon held in mid-latitude fjords (Biogeosciences Vol 13) Smeaton C, Austin WEN, Davies AL, Baltzer A, Howe JA, Baxter JM (2017) Scotland’s forgotten carbon: a national assessment of mid-latitude fjord sedimentary carbon stocks (Biogeosciences Vol 14) Smith RW, Bianchi TS, Allison M, Savage C, Galy V (2015) High rates of organic carbon burial in fjord sediments globally (Nature Geoscience Vol 8)

The

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SUMMER 2018

Clydeforth: Scotland’s megalopolis?

Professor Roy Thompson, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh

“A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.” Patrick Geddes, 1905 Patrick Geddes, the pioneering ecologist, RSGS Council member, community activist and renowned father of town planning, argued that Scotland’s biggest industrial centre and its capital would one day be absorbed into a single city region. Geddes foresaw a megalopolis reaching right across Scotland’s Central Belt.

Although this amalgamation and transformation didn’t happen in Geddes’ lifetime, current analysis of satellite images and historical cartography provides a powerful new tool for assessing patterns of urban growth and reveals that Geddes’ prediction was remarkably prescient.

When Geddes first conceived of Clydeforth, more than 90% of its area was countryside. Today Clydeforth is over half established, and the entwined countryside has shrunk so much that remaining greenspaces have fallen to levels common in metropolitan cities such as Shenzen, Singapore, Sydney and Vienna, where they constitute 40-45%. Already it is home to 3.6 million people, three airports and 172 golf courses. Remaining grass and farmland are disappearing at a rate of three football pitches a day. Geddes perceptively identified the main locations of change.

He foresaw how suburban, exurban and new-town developments would be hemmed in by hills to the north and south. Of course, today’s average density of under 2,000 individuals per km2 is an astonishing improvement on the 23,000/km2 that crowded into Scotland’s cities in the 1800s.

As a homely example of Clydeforth’s ever-continuing build-up, consider a stealthy urban fox with a den behind Eastfield in North Lanarkshire. Today it could easily trot to Seton Sands on the East Lothian coast – a distance of 40 miles – without having to encounter any of its country cousins. Its fox-safe, urban route passes through old coal workings, the vast Heartlands regeneration area, and housing and trading estates to cross the M8 near Redmill. The route then weaves onwards through Bathgate, Uphall and Broxburn, across three derelict shale-bings, the M9-M90 interchange and Edinburgh Airport to gain Edinburgh city centre. Thereafter it crosses through more suburbs, the Strawberry Corner pinch-point, and Prestonpans to terminate at Seton Sands. Similarly another 30-mile trail leads west through fully-connected urban, suburban and brownfield landscapes to the coast at Dalreoch. Beginning at nearby Newhouse, the trail proceeds through Holytown, Bellshill, the M73-M74 interchange, Broomhouse and Baillieston to Glasgow city centre. Next, by way of Partick, Clydebank, the old Bowling shipyards, Milton and Dumbarton, it enters Dalreoch.

A more formal, quantitative approach to evaluating urban sprawl is to contrast early land-utilisation maps with today’s surveys. In the mid-

1930s the indefatigable L Dudley Stamp marshalled large numbers of volunteers into documenting their immediate surroundings. The results of their huge undertaking were extensively cross-checked by Stamp. With his wife as chauffeur, Dudley covered thousands of miles standing up on the front seat of his car – head poking through the sunshine roof – as he checked what lay beyond the hedgerows. A stark contrast is revealed for the Central Belt, between the expanses of meadow, permanent grass and arable land mapped by Stamp’s survey and the remnants found on contemporary land-use maps produced by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. As a second approach to assessing expansion, a digitization of the urban footprint of 59 cities and towns, ranging in area from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Motherwell down to Kilsyth and Kirkliston, has been effected on a sequence of Ordnance Survey maps (1855 to 2016). A seven-fold areal enlargement in human settlement is revealed since Geddes’ day. A third approach, examination of spatially consistent satellite imagery (1990 to 2015), uncovers the same rapid rate of transformation and urbanisation.

“Fast public transport systems will be key to solving the coming crisis of the Central Belt.”

Once the conurbation principle is conceded and Clydeforth’s impending arrival accepted, it can be seen as a grand challenge for Scotland. A strategic vision is needed in which the twin centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh, along with their minor neighbours, retain their defining characteristics and cultures and yet complement one another so as to realise their full potential.

An overarching vision for the region as a whole is required. I suggest that the Scottish Government should take the lead by promoting closer integration and in nurturing a forward-looking urban development policy aimed at reducing disparities and achieving greater cohesion. It will be necessary to plan radically for Clydeforth. A more active urban development programme than mere patching and infilling will be required. In particular, maximising the capacity of fast public transport systems will be key to solving the coming crisis of the Central Belt and to reshaping its component parts.

Clydeforth (updated from Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 1915).

28 SUMMER 2018

Is a Good Food Nation achievable?

Keith Breasley, Service Manager, Fife Council

There can be few people who would not applaud the Scottish Government’s commitment to the production, manufacturing, marketing and consumption of Scottish food.

Against the background of two-thirds of adults and a third of children being overweight, we have to not only change what we eat but also develop an environment whereby choosing healthy food is not only easy but is the norm. Of course a change in diet will not be the solution to the problem. The modern lifestyle does not help in the fight against obesity. Those labour-saving devices we welcomed over the years are now encouraging a less energetic daily life. Who actually gets up to turn on music or the TV, or even to answer a phone? Did you use a lift or escalator today? Good food, however, can help keep you mentally and physically fit, and not only that, it is enjoyable – much better than an hour at the gym!

The forthcoming Good Food Nation Bill promises to join things up, take a holistic approach, and link demand and supply, diet and agriculture, mercifully avoiding legislation demanding gym attendance.

and so be susceptible to food education – you are never too old to learn! With public sector food being consumed by the majority of the population to some degree, surely it should be an exemplar for ethical and sustainable procurement?

It is unfortunate that what we may term ‘good’ food is generally more expensive than the alternative. The Good Food Nation consultation does make some reference to this, and legislation regarding minimum food costs in schools would go some way to addressing the problem. The wider economic, social and environmental benefits of procuring and serving sustainable public food need to be acknowledged during procurement so that decisions are not made purely on unit cost consideration. It is possible to increase the use of local and organic food within the public sector, but budgets need to be realistic.

“In an ideal world, local farms should be contracted to produce the public sector requirements.”

Food within the public sector can play a major part in stimulating appropriate production and manufacturing of food products by creating demand. To date, those companies who recognised that product reformulation was needed to comply with school food legislation have reaped the benefit by increasing sales dramatically.

Nutrient-based specifications and restrictions on menu content, however, will not achieve significant success in health on their own.

It is important that we teach not only cooking skills but also growing skills to encourage an understanding of food and its origins. Growers and educators need to come together to develop a joined-up approach to local sustainable food appreciation.

There needs to be communication between growers and their potential customers in the public sector, so that what is grown is what is required, or alternatively what can be grown is used.

It should not be difficult for local authorities, particularly in education settings, to predict accurately quantities and range of products that will be required at any specific time; standard menu cycles are in place in all schools. Smaller producers may bring community benefits but they may, however, also need greater flexibility and support from procurement if they are to secure public food contracts.

In an ideal world, local farms should be contracted to produce the public sector requirements. Whilst it is not possible to meet the demands of public sector menus in their entirety, this would not only improve sustainability targets but also provide a sound economic base for producers. Certainly this would require a change of mind-set for all involved and present some logistical challenges, but it would, in the long term, meet the aspiration of becoming a Good Food Nation.

It is important to consider that schools provide only one arena within the public sector for developing and strengthening a solid, sustainable food culture. Local authorities manage a wide range of visitor and leisure attractions offering hospitality, in addition to corporate buildings where parents and grandparents will eat daily

There are some ‘quick wins’ achievable by the government to move this agenda along. Food product advertising in all media streams could be subject to legislation, along with restrictions on cost-lead promotions within retail outlets such as multi-buys or ‘buy one get one free’ offers.

Licensing of street trading could be more rigorous, especially around facilities used by young people, and planning applications for fast-food outlets could be subject to far stricter scrutiny.

It is encouraging that there is now a will amongst politicians, food and drink professionals, and to some extent the general public, to make changes to address the health crisis in which we find ourselves. I would hope the complexity of formulating the Bill does not dissuade those working toward it.

The

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SUMMER 2018

Food for Life Beth Webb, Soil Association Scotland

The Good Food Nation Bill represents an exciting opportunity for Soil Association Scotland. We work across the farming and food system in Scotland, striving towards more sustainable farming and land use, and to make good food the easy choice for everyone. Therefore, we welcome this ambition to become a Good Food Nation. Our key recommendation for this Bill is to ensure that the public sector becomes a beacon of good food.

There are many signs indicating the environmental, social and economic vulnerabilities of the conventional food system; and many actors and cross-cutting policy areas have a role in building a healthier, more equitable and sustainable one. Solutions will require multi-level, multi-sectoral governance. So why are we focusing on the public sector? Caught between the hammer and anvil of globalisation and austerity, it might seem powerless and irrelevant. However, by focusing on becoming a beacon of good food, not only can the public sector lead by example, but it is uniquely placed to enable the third and private sectors to follow suit.

A care home resident and a child from a local nursery plant an apple tree.

There are several provisions that we believe will drive the public sector towards this ambition. Firstly, there needs by creating environments where it is normal, easy and enjoyable to be a clear definition of good food. We put forward our own for everyone to eat well. In addition, this purchasing power could definition as a starting point: be used to drive demand for good food by setting targets around • food that’s good for health: lots of fruit and sourcing local, organic and Fairtrade food with high vegetables, fish and wholegrains, less but animal welfare standards. This could create the better quality meat, and a lot less processed market that businesses need to move towards more food. Good food is even better when shared. sustainable forms of production.

• food that’s good for the environment: in The other programme is FFL Better Care, which is season, sustainably produced, low-climate currently being piloted in Edinburgh. It is funded by impact, and high animal welfare standards.

Big Lottery and aims to harness the power of food • food that’s good for the economy: grown to improve the health and well-being of older people by local producers, prepared by skilled and and tackle loneliness and social isolation. We are knowledgeable people, and supporting a working in partnership with City of Edinburgh thriving economy Council to test the Food for Life Care Home Framework. This An agreed definition should form the basis of a legislative helps to show care homes how they can use food to improve care framework that compels all public bodies to consider the vital across their setting. Examples of activities that make up a ‘whole role food can play in delivering on their social, economic and setting approach’ include achieving the Food for Life Served environmental priorities. Responsibility needs to be owned at Here award, growing food within the home’s grounds, farm the strategic level. This will ensure that visits, intergenerational links with schools, opportunities for good food to deliver and improving the dining environment. priorities around community planning An example of the intergenerational and health and social care, for example, activity that is taking place is the recent are recognised and acted on. In this tree planting day at the care home with way, public sector bodies should have children from a local nursery. This whole to consider good food when carrying setting approach is enabling care homes out their day-to-day work, shaping to unleash the potential of good food policy, delivering services, in relation for improving the health and well-being to their own employees and the food of care home residents, whilst building environments within their premises. connections with the local community.

“Imagine if every school, hospital, care home, prison and government building provided good food.”

We have two programmes that are These are just two examples of what the Nursery children help to dig holes for the care home’s fruit trees. helping to show what the public sector public sector as a beacon of good food as a beacon of good food could look like in reality. Our Food could look like, and the types of changes that the Good Food for Life Scotland (FFL) programme is funded by the Scottish Nation Bill could be used to promote and embed. Imagine Government and working with local authorities across Scotland if every school, hospital, care home, prison and government to help schools procure and serve good food. We use our Food building provided good food, and an environment that made for Life Served Here award as a mechanism to enable local it easy for citizens passing through to access and enjoy authorities to make this transition. healthier and more sustainable food; connecting communities The public plate feeds some of the most vulnerable people in society, in hospitals, prisons, schools and care homes. Therefore, the public sector can play a key role in tackling health inequalities

and providing opportunities for more sustainable, local food enterprises. Scotland would be well on the way to becoming a Good Food Nation.

30 SUMMER 2018

Conserving crop gene pools: the case of barley Dr Joanne R Russell and Ian K Dawson, James Hutton Institute

Crop gene pools have an important part to play in supporting human nutrition and in reducing the environmental costs of crop production, but these resources are being lost through land clearing, environmental degradation, changing agricultural practices and other pressures. In Scotland, the main agricultural crops are barley, potatoes and oilseed rape, all of which originated from other parts of the world (that is, they are ‘exotic’ crops), although barley has been grown in the country and the wider UK for millennia. This has resulted in farmer-developed barley landraces as well as old formally-bred varieties that are specifically adapted for local environmental conditions and for specific user requirements.

Maintaining old varieties and landraces of crops like barley is important for future crop development, because it provides the genetic base from which traits for future adaptation and production can be sourced. Particular genes of useful function can be bred into modern cultivars or – by understanding their function through experimentation (through field trials and assigning functions to parts of the barley genome – important genetic features can be otherwise ‘edited in’ to modern crops. Relevant research on barley is carried out at the James Hutton Institute, part of SEFARI (Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutes).

This work is funded through the Scottish Government’s Strategic Research Programme.

although only in much-diminished amounts compared to past decades and centuries, in the north and west of the country, in Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides. Bere landraces perhaps represent the oldest cereal in continuous commercial cultivation in the UK. Bere barleys are also found in Scandinavia, and seafarers from there and from Scotland must have contributed to complex patterns of their dispersal.

The bere crop was traditionally used for flour (beremeal) production, to provide malt for brewing and distilling, and straw for animal bedding and thatching. Measures are currently in place to re-integrate bere barley into whisky and beer production in order to use and conserve this special resource. Similar measures to integrate other crop landraces into niche food products will also help support the on-farm conservation of these important genetic resources.

“Maintaining old varieties and landraces of crops like barley is important for future crop development.”

With its whisky industry, spring type barley (that is, barley suitable for planting in the spring) with good malting quality is a particularly important cereal for Scotland, but there are concerns about the impact of climate change caused by humans on its production. One way to tackle this problem would be to use the wider barley gene pool to improve the currently poor malting quality of winter type barleys. Winter barley matures earlier in the summer and can therefore be harvested earlier in the year than spring barley, so planting winter barley with good malting quality would avoid summer droughts and still produce grain useful for whisky production.

Cereal genetic resources in the UK are maintained mostly as ex situ seed collections (in gene banks), but in some cases they are maintained as still-cultivated field resources. A good example in Scotland is the landraces of bere barley that are still grown,

Because the major Scottish crops are all of exotic origin, Scotland also relies on other parts of the world to maintain the genetic resources that will be crucial for adapting its agriculture to future production needs.

One of the main collections of barley globally is maintained by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). Until recently, ICARDA’s gene bank, where barley and other crop seed is stored, was located in Syria, but it recently had to relocate because of the civil war there, showing another threat to crop genetic resources. Another important gene bank of barley is the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany.

Since Scotland and the UK are net recipients, rather than net donors, from the perspective of crop genetic resource gene pools, following Brexit, measures to maintain and enhance access to these resources and to continue the excellent collaboration that currently exists with overseas partners in Europe (and elsewhere) will be crucial for future domestic food production.

A range of different types of barley growing in a field trial.

Large differences in the form of the plant are seen in this image.

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Hope and aspirations for the future of Scottish food Wendy Barrie, food campaigner

In 1957 the BBC broadcast an authoritative mini documentary on a spaghetti harvest, after which they received calls asking where to purchase said trees. Hard to believe perhaps, but many Brits had not eaten pasta nor knew its origins. This highly successful hoax was broadcast on 1st April and became a legend. Fast-forward to 2018 and the world of food has changed, but not all for the better and education remains a massive challenge. Indeed therein lies part of the problem, with government-funded initiatives relying on obsolete data rather than current nutritional information. Scottish schools are being fed material promoting low-fat spread not butter, minimizing red meat intake, classing non-dairy liquids with dairy milk, and warning against full-fat dairy produce at any time, yet allowing crisps, sweets and cakes in moderation. No wonder young people are confused.

There are schoolchildren who think orange juice comes from an orange cow, and I shall leave to your imagination what they make of cauliflower steaks and vegetarian bacon! Spaghetti trees are the least of our problems. We need robust honest education on growing seasons, local food production and how to cook, not influenced by commerce or sponsorship. We have lost so much knowledge and it is vital for our future that we regain it.

to host a tasting workshop on Scotland’s Ark of Taste foods.

There is much written on the Mediterranean diet, yet our northern neighbours have a diverse and delicious range of healthy foods from lamb to seafood and berries to spices, all achieved in balance with our planet, not abusing it. Scotland has had setbacks with its food heritage, but all is not lost.

There are those like me who wish to restore it, and there are increasing numbers of family farms recognizing the benefits of heritage breeds and varietals.

In Scotland we have the land, coast, climate and knowledge to produce healthy and delicious food for all and meet our food security and food sovereignty needs, but we must farm in smaller-scale systems, resist pumping in chemicals and concentrates for quick fixes, and take a long hard look at how we are ‘developing’, lest we lose sight of the naturally occurring high quality produce we are famed for.

Our food systems over-rely on giant logistic hubs, unstable genetics and industrialized processing: logistics failed miserably at one dump of snow this winter; most chicken, pork and dairy production depends heavily on small gene pools, and highly processed foods are doing our health no favours. So are we more efficient these days? There have been several investigations showing that large scale does not give us healthier food, and according to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Report, the actual nutrition in our food has reduced by 50% since 1965!

“Heritage varieties give us food security benefits, healthier soils, a range of flavours in extended seasons, and also support a host of wildlife contributing to our planet’s wellbeing.”

The importance of gene banks on breeds and varietals has never been more crucial as world biodiversity diminishes. Recently we attended a meeting of Sweden’s Linderödsvin, a landrace pig from southern Sweden and one of few purebred heritage pigs left. Scotland’s own grice was extinct by the 1940s. Modern intensive farming methods encourage turbo-growth on concentrate feed to produce cheap food of questionable nutritional value and minimal flavour. Heritage breeds on the other hand (our Highland, Ayrshire or Aberdeen Angus cattle; Shetland, Hebridean or Soay sheep) mature slowly, out on their natural habitat, producing healthier, more flavoursome meat in a sustainable environmental way – indeed, you can even reduce your meat consumption, should you wish, and still pack flavour in a dish due to the quality of the meat. Likewise with fruit and vegetables, heritage varieties give us food security benefits, healthier soils, a range of flavours in extended seasons, and also support a host of wildlife contributing to our planet’s well-being.

We have just returned from Slow Food’s Terra Madre Nordic, a convention and food festival of small producers from across the Nordic countries held in Copenhagen, where I was invited

Photos © Wendy Barrie

Scotland’s foodie, Wendy Barrie (www.wendybarrie.co.uk), is a highly respected campaigner for local sustainable food, popular cookery show presenter and food writer. Founder and Director of the award-winning www.scottishfoodguide.scot and www. scottishcheesetrail.com, Wendy is Leader in Scotland for the Slow Food Ark of Taste, and a Slow Food Chef Alliance Member.

32 SUMMER 2018

Farming’s vision: educate, sustain, promote Jonnie Hall, Director of Policy and Member Services, NFU Scotland

Food and drink impacts all of society and it is the jewel in Scotland’s crown. A flagship sector, the value of food and drink has grown to £14.4 billion per annum, now surpassing every other sector, with new targets to more than double in size by 2030.

disengagement with the food production system from a young age can lead to unhealthy choices being made in adulthood.

We believe that the Scottish education system should do more to deliver consistent food education across Scotland, from the inner cities to the countryside.

The Scottish Government’s proposed Good Food Nation Bill will be introduced during a period of great uncertainty for the whole food and drink industry. The negotiations to leave the EU will undoubtedly have consequences for all parts of the chain – whether that be the government support received by Scotland’s farmers and crofters; or changes to immigration rules impacting employment practices in the food processing sector; or how the end product is then traded with international partners.

To improve the reputation of Scotland as a healthy and sustainably-fed nation, and rebuild the nation’s relationship with food, the Good Food Nation Bill should focus on outcomes that simultaneously educate, sustain and promote.

“The social benefit of a healthy, well-fed nation with a thriving food and drink industry cannot be understated.”

The immediate challenge is therefore ensuring the Brexit outcome allows this important sector to continue to flourish.

If that is achieved, then Scottish legislation to enshrine the Good Food Nation should enhance the whole supply chain to deliver on the ambitions for 2030 as well as public health benefits and sustainability goals.

NFU Scotland has a clear vision for the Good Food Nation Bill and what such legislation should prioritise.

Building a healthy relationship with food The vast majority of Scottish food and drink is sustainable, healthy and nutritious; the social benefit of a healthy, wellfed nation with a thriving food and drink industry cannot be understated.

All too often, it is reported that our children have a lack of understanding about where fresh produce comes from. This

Educate

Existing charities such as the Royal Highland Education Trust already deliver a wealth of fantastic work to facilitate this education on a demand-led basis. We support the inclusion of targets within the Curriculum for Excellence to offer children a set number of hours within the school year to visit farms to learn about food production. We also consider that Scottish schools and colleges should be facilitated with additional resources to educate pupils about how food choices affect personal health and environmental sustainability.

Sustain We recognise that food poverty continues to be present in Scotland and this must be eradicated. We believe that efforts to tackle food poverty can be linked to food education, in highlighting to consumers young and old how they can make healthy, homegrown choices at no additional cost.

We want to explore options with Scottish Government as to how the farming, food and drink industry can work better with government and public health bodies to carry out this promotion. If successful, there could be real rewards for the circular economy in educating the population about how to make the most of food, therefore cutting waste.

Promote A Good Food Nation should be one which uses every opportunity to advocate the health benefits of fresh, locally sourced food in Scotland’s public places. We are open to exploring how public spaces such as health and education centres can be utilised to promote healthy alternatives to highlyprocessed foods.

There are almost certainly no quick fixes to Scotland’s food, diet and health challenges, and legislation does automatically mean a change in attitudes, perceptions or actions.

Nevertheless, there is a clear opportunity right now to recast Scottish society’s relationship with the food we produce. From plough to plate or field to fork, it is time for us all to properly value Scotland’s food in every sense – and the farmers and crofters who provide for us.

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Growing food to prevent warming Jim Densham, Senior Land Use Policy Officer, RSPB Scotland

What the countryside looks like in 2050 is likely to be very different to how it looks now, because of climate change. And that’s not a prediction of more wind turbines or solar farms, but because the food we grow on the land, and how we grow it, will have to change.

when you do buy meat, try to make sure it’s from a farm with high welfare and sustainability standards, not easy with modern labelling and food chains. Eating organic can help too as, in general, organic systems produce fewer emissions and are better for nature.

Climate change is affecting farming now; for example, heavier rain and waterlogged soils have prevented farmers planting potatoes at the right time.

Climate change is affecting seasonal timings, and ultimately this could mean farmers choose different ways to manage the land.

Recently, 50 organisations and experts wrote a joint letter asking Government Ministers to put in place policies which drive a ‘just transition’ to carbonneutral farming by 2050. Those who signed the letter, including the RSGS, RSPB Scotland, the National Farmers Union of Scotland, and Scottish Land and Estates, want to see government commitment to helping farmers make their sector’s carbon footprint balanced by mid-century. But the transition needs to be fair so that farmers and crofters aren’t forced out of business, causing further hardship and land to be abandoned. This wouldn’t be good for our wildlife, our rural communities or our future food supply.

How crops are grown or livestock is raised will also change because of the need for farming to help meet new climate targets, to be set in the forthcoming Climate Change Bill in Scotland.

Farming is the source of approximately a quarter of all Scotland’s climate emissions, and by 2030 will be the largest source of emissions if current trends continue – so farming must do more.

“The big win for the climate (and health) comes from reducing the amount of meat and dairy we eat.”

Farming can do more, because it can be saint as well as sinner on emissions. When food is produced from the land, there are always some emissions produced; these need to be minimised. For example, planning fertiliser use better will help to cut nitrous oxide emissions, and improving sheep and cow health can cut methane emissions, both dangerous greenhouse gases. Farmers and other land managers also have the opportunity to manage land in ways which store carbon in soils and vegetation. Planting trees, restoring peatbogs, creating permanent wildlife habitats, and increasing the organic matter in soils, can all help to suck carbon from the atmosphere and store it away for decades. This climate-positive action is essential for the country if Scotland is to meet ambitious new targets by 2050 – our contribution to meeting the aims of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

As food buyers we can help the climate with our food choices when shopping or eating out. The big win for the climate (and health) comes from reducing the amount of meat and dairy we eat. Livestock production, especially cattle, has a high carbon footprint. Choosing to eat less meat can make a difference, and

Support needs to help individual farmers and crofters towards the best solutions for them and the climate. It could help farmers into agroforestry, to buy new machinery to spread manures and slurries better, or to convert to an organic system. For others there may be a more radical change to their farming systems, whereby they get paid for lowering the intensity of farming, which both preserves the carbon in the soil and provides habitats for wildlife. The amount of food produced may be less from such a low-intensity farm business, but it could be more sustainably produced and be resilient to changes in the climate.

The countryside has been changing for centuries as farming has evolved, and the way it looks will continue to change in years to come. Those who wrote or signed the joint letter don’t have all the answers about how farming can become carbonneutral, but we know we have to start with what will work and develop other solutions in the coming years. The need is for government, farmers and rural communities to work together, be ambitious and act now.

34 SUMMER 2018

Ambiguities in the ‘good food’ project Dr Marisa Wilson, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh

On paper, Scotland’s plan to become a Good Food Nation ticks all the boxes for creating a more sustainable, healthy and socially just food system. In practice, terms like ‘good food’ can be appropriated by powerful actors and institutions to maintain current and historical patterns of food production and consumption, side-lining more progressive agendas.

A useful way to understand these competing tendencies is food regime analysis. Harriet Friedmann’s work on food regimes illustrates how particular patterns of land use, capital accumulation and (inter)national governance have emerged over time to favour the large-scale industrial production of grains, livestock and oils. In the case of Scotland, the grains are wheat and barley, the livestock (mostly) cattle and sheep, and the oil, rapeseed. During the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, Scottish farms (crofts) were converted into pasture and whole farming communities went to the cities in search of work. After the Great Wars of the 20th century, Scotland and the UK became locked into a grain- and meat-led agricultural economy through the Marshall Plan. Through this aid, the US supplied the UK (and Europe) with food, feed and fertilizer, and later a model for subsidizing grain and other key commodities such as beet sugar, cheapening the cost of these basic components for processed foods.

made from wheat, and sugary tea, which we now know to have unfavourable health effects.

If proponents of ‘good food’ in Scotland seek to (re)invigorate consumer pride in Scotland’s larder, they must ask whether present-day populations with working class roots are too far removed from peasant histories to care about Scotland’s rural and culinary past. Legislators also face challenges in terms of ‘re-peasantising’ the Scottish countryside. Despite recent increases in community owned land (from 112,158 acres in 1990 to 562,230 in 2017), the government’s target of one million acres of land in community ownership by 2020 covers only 5.8% of the total land area in Scotland (about 19.3 million acres). Land dedicated to grain and grazing still covers around 50% of the total land area.

Perhaps the most promising strategy of the ‘good food’ project is to tackle food poverty and health inequalities by increasing low-income communities’ access to local food hubs (coupled with income supports). Yet there is also repeated emphasis in the documentation on the ability of industry to reformulate food products to provide healthier and affordable food options to low-income communities through supermarkets. These divergent strategies point to different interpretations of ‘good food for all’: the one based on closed-loop farming and social connections, the other based on simplified environments and diets.

“Perhaps the most promising strategy of the ‘good food’ project is to tackle food poverty and health inequalities.”

This so-called ‘mercantile-industrial’ food regime led to competing tendencies between agriculture and farming. As Henry Bernstein argues, agriculture became tied to everextending supply chains and a key sector in an expanding global capitalism. Farming, on the other hand, remained tied to agroecological and cultural systems perpetuated through social and natural cycles – ‘closed loops’ that an industrial capitalist agriculture opened through the purchase of external inputs and the sale of monocultures for industrial processing. The rise of ‘flow through’ industrial agriculture was supported through national subsidies, institutionalised through international trade policies, ‘biologized’ in environments, and embodied in the consumption of processed foods. In the process, farmers were demoted to buyers and sellers of upstream and downstream products sold by increasingly consolidated transnational corporations.

The competing tendency, small-scale agroecological farms, continued to find spaces for survival and renewal, if unevenly and greatly diminished by these and earlier histories of enclosure and cultural marginalisation. In (post)colonial Scotland, the local varieties of barleys and oats that present-day foodies are so keen to reclaim were shunned by contemporaries as food fit only for animals. Within this social, environmental and historical context, it is not hard to see why urban working classes favoured foods linked to modernity and status, such as biscuits

The strategic ambiguity of terms such as ‘good food’ can hinder progressive change in our food system. Yet there is hope that the Bill will lead to a genuine reworking of social and natural relationships to foster closed-loop cycles. Plans for the Bill have led to an unprecedented call for grassroots participation in high-level strategic planning through the Scottish Food Commission. Moreover, the devolution of power to a Scottish Food Standards Agency may diversify voices away from corporate dominance and open the way towards more farming-centred subsidies. Thus while it is clear that past food regimes have shaped present patterns in Scotland’s food system, the future and its possibilities remain open.

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What do GROWers bring to a Good Food Nation?

Dr Deborah Long FRSGS, Programme Director, GROW Observatory

The Scottish Government’s Good Food Nation Bill came up briefly in the parliamentary debate on 25th January, with an update on its progress towards the government’s ambitions on ‘good food’. These are to build a statutory framework to join up the government’s approach to food, and to consider steps to improve the effectiveness of the food and drink supply in Scotland. Progress turns out to be another consultation later in 2018. What should we all expect?

What does a Good Food Nation mean? According to Fergus Ewing, Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy and Connectivity, it means, “We want to enhance the national food policy with the vision of Scotland becoming a good food nation, where people from every walk of life take pride, pleasure and benefit from the food that they buy, serve and eat day by day,” (29th June 2016).

It should mean more than this, however. A Good Food Nation should be able to provide easy access for all its people to healthy and sustaining food. That food should be produced sustainably. A Good Food Nation is also a nation where people grow their own food as individuals and communities, and where people can access locallygrown food easily and regularly.

and soil management through online courses and largescale growing and soil experiments. Together, we gather data on sustainable growing techniques, on soil management approaches, on growing the best crops for local conditions, and on soil parameters used to validate and strengthen climate change models. GROW is distributing 15,000 soil sensing kits across nine GROW Places in Europe, to build the biggest citizen-generated database on soil properties.

These GROW Places occur from Scotland to Greece, Ireland to Sweden. With the data and knowledge we build from these, people are able to grow more food sustainably, identify and plant crops suited to their locality and soil types, build healthier soils, and learn how to adapt growing, soil and land management activities to changing climate.

“A Good Food Nation should be able to provide easy access for all its people to healthy and sustaining food.”

The sustainable production of food, and access to healthy and sustaining food, are key to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Scotland was one of the first countries to sign up in 2015.

Scotland is justifiably proud of its natural environment and its burgeoning food and drink sector. Yet at the same time it is still widely seen, and labelled, as the unhealthy nation of Europe. Developing a coherent approach to food will be key for the Scottish Government.

The new GROW Observatory (www.growobservatory. org) is at the forefront of two approaches that will be invaluable to progress here: 1) enabling more people right across Scotland and Europe to grow and access local food, grown sustainably; 2) building healthier soils so that future generations are guaranteed more sustainable food production and a heathy environment.

GROW is an 18-partner-strong consortium, led

by Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art at the University of Dundee, and working with research institutions, NGOs, design and technology companies. On the ground, we work with local communities in growing networks from across Europe. Together, we learn about food growing

With citizens and data, GROW is playing its part in improving the coherence of food and development policy in Europe, in supporting and enabling local communities to grow their own food and reduce food miles, providing physical activity and building social cohesion through growing. By making the links between local communities, supporting locally adapted sustainable food production methods, and by gathering data to strengthen scientific models on climate change and soil health, there is a lot that the citizens involved can offer a Good Food Nation. All of this, taken together, helps governments across Europe meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

36 SUMMER 2018

Gold Standard education?

Mike Robinson, Chief Executive, RSGS

According to a report featured in The Telegraph in May, authored by Professor Jim Scott, the majority of Scottish schools are studying six or seven subjects at Nat5, rather than the eight which he describes as the ‘gold standard’.

Many parents, teachers and pupils are concerned about this narrowness of choice, and in many cases it is only parental pressure that meant many schools have not cut below seven subjects. But this narrowness threatens the reputation and breadth in our worldfamous education system, and severely constrains pupils’ choices at Higher and beyond.

Professor Scott’s findings closely mirror the results of the RSGS/SAGT survey of 2015, in which we revealed that 58% of schools were studying six subjects or fewer. Our conclusion then was that this represented a severe threat to Geography uptake, and this concern remains.

Number of subjects studied at Nat 4/5.

The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is not the sole reason for this reduction in subjects. Some of it is a result of funding cuts as local authorities struggle with year-on-year reductions in funding. This background of a decade-long policy of austerity is beginning to really bite, and if anything the funding is about to get worse. This is leading to reductions in specialist teachers and teaching, amalgamation of departments and an increase in use of ‘campus’ schooling, all of which in turn is leading to huge inconsistencies between schools and between local authorities, and greatly impacting pupil choice and opportunity. As more and more power and funding are devolved to schools, the voice of parents is going to be increasingly important in steering subject numbers and choices.

subject, even carry out fieldwork. And most importantly, to teach more subjects.

So, of these two options – study less or start earlier – a large majority have chosen to study less, and around half of schools don’t start teaching Nat5’s until S4, putting pressure on time to cover course content, all serving to short-change pupil choice in the process. And if we keep choosing to study fewer subjects, we will gradually see the breadth of our education system narrow ever further, as some subjects will simply not have teachers. Beyond Geography, many other subjects and teachers share these concerns. As Professor Scott reported, “the creeping movement towards six courses has already resulted in a massive collapse in the number of youngsters studying modern languages.” If we want our children to realise their full potential and understand the breadth of learning available, we need to keep their options open and give them more choice.

“Many other subjects and teachers share these concerns.”

However, CfE remains the major driver of this reduction in subject choice, and the reason for this is the clunky way it was developed. The content for S1-S3 was written before S4 had been resolved, so there is a lack of continuity in the subject matter, often exacerbated where S1-S3 children are not being taught Geography by a Geography teacher (or are taught any specialist subject by a non-specialist).

But most fundamentally, because of the number of hours each subject is meant to be given, there is not enough time in S4 to teach more than six or seven subjects, and even then it is rushed. There are problems with over-assessment, and these have not got any better despite recent changes.

“As more and more power and funding are devolved to schools, the voice of parents is going to be increasingly important in steering subject numbers and choices.”

Whilst many schools and local authorities have responded by cutting back to six subjects (or seven where parents have complained), there is another option.

They could remove the time pressure and start ensuring the course is being taught in S3. If the courses begin earlier in S3, there is more time to cover course content, explore the

© White Pass and Yukon Railway

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The King’s speech Jo Woolf, RSGS Writer-in-Residence

On 24th October 1934, the RSGS celebrated its Golden Jubilee.

The newspapers were full of the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of York, who were visiting the Society as representatives of its Patron, King George V. In the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, RSGS members joined delegates from other scientific and geographical societies at an afternoon reception for 2,000 guests. This was the opening session of the Society’s Edinburgh branch, and the Duke of York had agreed to present some awards. Among the recipients were Isobel Wylie Hutchison, who was awarded the Mungo Park Medal for her explorations in the Arctic, and Lord Meston of Agra and Dunnottar, who received the Scottish Geographical Medal “for distinguished services to geography over a period of many years.” After the ceremony, Lord Meston, a statesman whose family hailed from Aberdeen, addressed the company on the subject of India.

Photographs from the occasion include a lovely image of the Duke and Duchess of York smiling and chatting to Principal Smail of Heriot-Watt College, who was the Chairman of the Council.

The Duchess, clad in a fur-trimmed coat and carrying an enormous bouquet of roses, is beaming delightedly at her husband, who, not to be outdone, holds in his hand a top hat that has been polished to a dazzling shine.

That same evening, the RSGS held a banquet at the North British Station Hotel (now the Balmoral). The Scotsman newspaper meticulously lists all the most distinguished guests, including representatives from local and national government; delegates from the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce; the principals of Edinburgh universities; the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen; and the Director-General of Ordnance Survey.

Park, Alexander Mackenzie and David Livingstone, and observed that their spirit was upheld by more recent figures such as Sir John Murray and William Speirs Bruce. He was impressed by the way in which the Society had encouraged enterprising travel and discovery, and by its sincere endeavour to promote the scientific study of geography. He remarked on the flight to Australia which had just been undertaken by Charles Scott and Tom Campbell Black in a record-breaking 52 hours, and he also mentioned the recent launch of the Queen Mary at Clydebank. In these days of the insistence of travel, he said, communication played an important part in promoting better feelings between peoples.

“It was likely that most of the audience knew about the Duke’s unfortunate speech impediment, but they would not have heard him speak in person.”

“It is this truer understanding between races and a knowledge of mutual difficulties and limitations that can help us in our search for peace.”

He then proposed a toast to the RSGS and its President, Lord Elphinstone, who also happened to be the Duchess of York’s brother-in-law, and the dinner concluded with elegantly expressed thanks and good wishes.

The ordeal was over… and the Duke of York no doubt retired gratefully to Carberry Tower in East Lothian, where he and his wife were staying. He knew that countless The Duke and Duchess of York with Principal Smail speeches would be expected of him during of Heriot-Watt College outside the Usher Hall. his lifetime, but he could have had no idea that, two years later, the abdication of his older brother, Edward VIII, would propel him reluctantly onto the British throne as King After the toasts, the Duke of York got up to speak.

George VI. It was likely that most of the audience knew about the Duke’s The movie The King’s Speech tells the story of the King’s struggle unfortunate speech impediment, but they would not have heard and the intense pressure that he felt before addressing the him speak in person. As a young naval officer, the King’s second nation on the eve of World War II. His speech, which was hugely son had seen action in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and successful, is portrayed as being his first live broadcast, but in had been mentioned in despatches, but he still had an innate fact his first broadcast happened sooner than that – at the RSGS nervousness which resulted in a severe stammer, and he dreaded banquet, in fact. Writing in 1952, the Society’s Secretary, John the prospect of public speaking. After his marriage to Lady ‘Ian’ Bartholomew, who was present on the night, recalled that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and with her enthusiastic encouragement, it was “the first occasion on which His late Majesty broadcast he had sought the assistance of a speech therapist by the to the public.” A glance at the scheduling of programmes on name of Lionel Logue, and the exercises were beginning to have Scottish radio confirms that the speech was indeed broadcast some effect. Confidence did not come overnight, however, and live at 9.10pm on 24th October 1934, and that it lasted for 20 meanwhile the audience waited eagerly for his opening words. minutes.

“My Lord Provost, my Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for Bartholomew praised the future King’s speech, which he said the very kind manner in which you have responded to the toast of was “characteristic in the quality of its understanding,” and my family, and for the warm welcome which you have extended to added that it would always be cherished in the Society’s annals. me here this evening…”

“Those who were present,” he wrote, “could form some idea After his grateful acknowledgements, the Duke paid tribute to the of the tremendous effort called for, facing the microphone, to RSGS. Scotland, he said, had a right to boast of a geographical overcome his tragic difficulty in speech. They liked to think that society, for her sons from the earliest times had gone forth over the confidence he gained of later years in his happy Christmas strange waters and sought their livelihoods in new and distant broadcasts had in no small way its beginning in that first lands. He praised Scottish explorers James Bruce, Mungo successful triumph in their midst.”

BOOK CLUB

38 SUMMER 2018

William Speirs Bruce

Skeletons

Forgotten Polar Hero

The Frame of Life

W S Bruce was a Scottish nationalist and naturalist who led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-04) and participated in or led many other polar expeditions from 1892 through to 1919, particularly to Spitsbergen. He is now largely forgotten compared with the ‘greats’, Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen. But he was ahead of his time in dreaming of a network of co-operating meteorological stations in the south, and can be considered the Father of Meteorology in the South Atlantic. This biography returns to primary sources to provide a new and controversial view of the relationship between Bruce and the then President of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, and also draws conclusions about Bruce’s personality.

Islander A Journey Around Our Archipelago Patrick Barkham (Granta Books, October 2017) The British Isles are an archipelago made up of two large islands and 6,289 smaller ones. Some, like the Isle of Man, resemble miniature nations, with their own language and tax laws; others, like Ray Island in Essex, are abandoned and mysterious places haunted by myths, ghosts and foxes. There are resurgent islands such as Eigg, liberated from capricious owners to be run by their residents; holy islands like Bardsey, the resting place of 20,000 saints; and deserted islands such as St Kilda.

Our small islands are places where the past is unusually present, but they can also offer a vision of an alternative future. Meeting all kinds of islanders, from nuns to puffins, from local legends to rare subspecies of vole, Barkham seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small island, and what it means to be an islander.

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams (Oxford University Press, March 2018) When evolution discovered the trick of making mineralized skeletons, life was able to devise a plethora of structures: shells in which to hide, armour for defence, sharp teeth for attack. Skeletons allowed life to grow big, and provided the strength for rapid movement.

Without skeletons, we would still exist in a simple, Precambrian world of soft-bodied forms. In this account of how skeletons were gained, and how they transformed life over hundreds of millions of years, the authors introduce us to an astonishing array of creatures, from the puzzling archaeocyathids that once built reefs, and tiny radiolarians with delicate, glassy skeletons, to the giant terror birds that stalked South America.

Plate Tectonics Professor Iain Stewart (Michael Joseph, March 2018) Uncover the fundamental theory of how our dynamic planet works. Written by RSGS President Professor Iain Stewart, Plate Tectonics explores the Earth as a planetary machine and investigates the people and ideas that changed the way we look at the world. Readers will learn about the make-up of the Earth in the past and the present, from monsoon-like currents in our planet’s radioactive interior, to magnetic force lines, to what the planet would look like without water. This book is part of the new Ladybird Expert series: written by leading lights and outstanding communicators in their fields, these books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture.

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The Third Plate Field Notes on the Future of Food Dan Barber (Abacus, May 2016) Based on ten years of surveying farming communities around the world, top New York chef Dan Barber offers a radical new way of thinking about food. The ‘first plate’ was a classic meal centred on a large cut of meat with few vegetables. On the ‘second plate’, championed by the farm-to-table movement, meat is free-range and vegetables are locally sourced. It’s better-tasting, and better for the planet, but the second plate’s architecture is identical to that of the first.

Both disrupt ecological balances, causing soil depletion and nutrient loss; not a sustainable way to farm or eat. The ‘third plate’ offers a solution: an integrated system of vegetable, cereal and livestock production that is fully supported – in fact, dictated – by what we choose to cook for dinner. The Third Plate is where good farming and good food intersect.

Readers of The Geographer can purchase this softback edition of The Third Plate for only £8.24 (RRP £10.99) with FREE UK P&P. To order, please telephone 01903 828503 during office hours and quote offer reference ‘LB220’.

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Isobel P Williams and John Dudeney (Amberley Publishing, March 2018)