THE WAR in Ukraine has demonstrated how tenuous our food chain is. Climate change and July’s record-breaking heatwave served as a warning, as animals and crops struggled with the heat as much as humans. The threat of water shortage is back. Seven million adults visited a foodbank in May. And in a country that imports more than 80 per cent of its fruit and over 45 per cent of its vegetables from abroad, fuel price rises will affect food price rises.

Monopoly ownership in the energy, water and food sectors will ensure that prices carry on rising. To transform our countryside we need first to talk about land ownership, monopoly control of food retail, hedge fund speculation, climate change and long-term plans.

Who owns what?

Twelve per cent of Britain’s 60 million acres is owned by just 50 landowners. The Communist Party (CP) asserts that land should be nationalised. This would be a political decision. But in fact most of the biggest landowners were publicly owned before the Conservatives discovered privatisation and in one case still is. Following a campaign in 1994, privatisation of the biggest landowner, the Forestry Commission, was blocked.

The Forestry Commission is followed by the Ministry of Defence, Crown Properties, National Trust and the RSPB. Sixth in line is Richard Scott, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, followed by utilities such as energy and water, then transport, mining and education. Then follows absentee foreign-owned land and individual capitalists such as James Dyson who owns land that is 3,000 times the size of Wembley stadium.

Breaking the grip of monopoly ownership

If we want to be able to look long term at the future of food growing and consuming, Britain’s people need to control ownership of the land. This would allow us to plan and expand land used for re-wilding and biodiversity. We could change the methods of farming and support the growth of large scale agricultural co-ops. But land nationalisation alone would not meet the challenges.

Our food is produced by over 215,000 farms of all shapes and sizes. But these are dominated by giant monopolies which also have a stranglehold over production and distribution.

For example, in the all-important seed sector, just four companies own 90 per cent of the global grain market. The “big four” grocery retailers, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons account for more than 50 per cent of all meat, 65 per cent of eggs and as much as 65 per cent of all fish purchased over the counter.

They use this power to control the price they pay to suppliers and charge to us. And they use this cornered market to sell us lower-quality meat and more pre-packaged food high in salts and sugars. Concentration of ownership produces extraordinary profits.

Breaking up these monopolies would be possible with major state ownership of sections of food production, support for the establishment of co-operatives, bolstering resources available to small and medium farmers, subsidy for organic farming and provision of start-up funding for food growers in key sectors. This was done before during WWII at the flick of a political switch.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) which oversees our agriculture and food industry is tied to big farming, giant fertiliser companies and the multiple food retailers.

There is a strong case to change Defra so that it can work effectively with local government — it is only locally that soil erosion can be checked and support given to farm areas at risk of flooding, erosion and the impact of climate change.

An education initiative

The CP in the east of England, in their programme Eastern Rising, have called for the establishment of a university for agriculture. These could also be established in other regions and nations where agriculture dominates the local economy.

We need the creation of apprenticeships so that young people have the opportunity of getting high-level skills that would help them gain good-quality jobs in food and agriculture.

Progressive federalism

The CP is campaigning for progressive federalism and the creation of regional assemblies that have full economic, legislative and financial powers necessary to protect and develop the economic, social and cultural interests of their people.

The role of a regional assembly, backed by popular mobilisation around a broadly agreed programme, aims to shift the balance of power in favour of the majority and enable working people and their allies to exercise increased control over the allocation of resources a national and regional level.

Regional assemblies would focus on long-term plans such as prioritising the conservation of resources, including soil and water, rolling out rural broadband, co-operative use of electric-driven farm machinery (incredibly Britain has no mass produced electric tractors), soil cultivation, planting, region-wide irrigation plans, harvesting, and use of renewables such as wind and wave power.

A focus on community health

We have empty shelves and outrageous price hikes. We import half the food we eat, with much being processed here while the raw materials are sourced abroad. We have a rise in food-related illnesses and obesity.

Half the food we eat has more than six ingredients on the packaging, a sign that food has travelled long distances and is manufactured before it is consumed.

Currently as much as 40 per cent of the food we produce is wasted. The government refuse to act and have abandoned even basic plans to tax high sugar and salt content. There is a pressing need to accelerate food education in schools and communities to combat obesity.

Subsidising healthier, locally produced food helps the planet, the people and the producers. It also bypasses the speculators and their much-loved “world market.” This is only part of the answer, as food poverty is a component of the other vital ingredients of capitalism; high rents and poor housing, soaring energy costs, low pay and a lack of job opportunities.

Prioritising the workers

The EU, with its common agricultural and common fisheries policies has done much damage over the decades and distorted our growth pattern, rewarding the bigger farmers and injuring the environment.

The government’s strategy for food white paper released in June completely avoids addressing the interests of those who work the land and process and sell the food. Our answer should be that the land goes to those who work it.

The last of the Agricultural Wages Boards which sought to hold the line on wages, even though impossibly low, were broken up by the Lib Dem-Tory government. The picking and processing industries are completely reliant on 250,000 seasonal workers, many of them migrants with few rights and little protection, often brought in illegally from as far away as Nepal and Indonesia.

Smaller farmers are really feeling the pinch as the bigger landholding farmers scoop up the post-Brexit grants. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority — formed as a result of trade union pressure following the death of cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 — is being killed off by cutbacks.

The CP argues for a large increase in the number of inspectors, but would look to regional assemblies and local councils to form labour agencies to regulate the supply of labour, that impose trade union rates of pay and conditions and are fully covered by health and safety regulations.

There is a basis here for a countryside community campaign that brings together workers and small farmers, rural trades councils and local councils. It is possible. The Countryside Alliance had a significant political impact but was quickly press-ganged into the service of big farmers and local conservatives. A new alliance would have to be union-led.

Food self-sufficiency

Food self-sufficiency in Britain is currently a mere 58 per cent. This will not change without a revolutionary transformation in who owns the land and how farms work.

It requires government intervention to break up the giant food and retail monopolies, empowering of local councils, and a big increase in pay and improvement in conditions for those who make and sell our food, making such jobs attractive.

The TUC was at its strongest when it had industrial committees that could bring together all the unions involved in industrial sectors such as agriculture and food. How best to bring together the united union power of the GMB, BFAWU, Unite and Unison?

The policy alternatives exist, indeed they are widely understood and very popular. The TUC needs to develop an alternative to the Conservatives’ strategy for food.

Phil Katz is secretary of the east of England district of the Communist Party.