Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 March 2022
The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill could play a crucial role in setting the direction of travel towards a fair, healthy and sustainable food system in Scotland. World-leading legislation that establishes the core purpose of the food system in law, with accompanying systems of governance that ensure progress and accountability, can catalyse a transformation in how our food system works.
That has been the aim and objective of the work that I have experienced as a member of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee. By taking a whole-system approach, the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill creates a revolutionary framework that ensures that people’s fundamental human rights and the integrity of our ecological home are promoted today and into the future.
The cost of living crisis has created a growing situation in which food is at the heart of some of our biggest challenges in this country. In the committee, we discussed food insecurity. That brought back forgotten memories of just how creative my own family would have to be, not out of choice but out of necessity. I spent time living in a food-insecure home, and I remember the innovative methods that I would use to make a small amount of food stretch a long way to feed my entire family. People simply cannot afford what they cannot afford.
To our nation’s detriment, the most affordable foods are often the ones that are high in salts and natural carbohydrate sugars—particularly long-life canned and packet goods, which are needed to stock food banks. That creates a whole host of societal and cultural issues that feed into the direct link between poverty and poor health outcomes. The implementation of the bill could contribute towards combating that.
I hope that, through our work, we have swept aside the rhetoric of the past around education as a silver bullet. The arguments about obesity being a consequence of ignorance are long gone. I recall many pieces of evidence—from evidence on inequality and ill health to evidence on ecological damage—that shed light on a food system with a sense of injustice that the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill will address.
Not least now, in the context of doing what we can, when we can to protect our people in Scotland who are reeling from an escalating cost of living crisis and to mitigate that, we are seeing people who are, maybe for the first time, being priced out of a decent diet, are reliant on food banks and are suffering the consequences of malnutrition and food insecurity.
Engaging with this piece of work has been, and will be, invaluable. The legislation, supported by existing rights and fleshed out as the cost of living crisis grows, will—it has to—make progress. Whole generations are growing up hungry, children’s educational attainment is being affected, opportunities are being denied and potential is not being realised. ?
?It would be true to say that in the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee’s deliberations, attention has been paid to setting targets in the legislation. However, part of the problem is what targets actually mean in this context. ?The bill should not be led by the nose by a focus on targets but led and delivered holistically. l will explain why.
?The roll-out of the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill can be led by looking at the positive impact of our changing culture around food.?That wraparound approach provides flexibility and vision in how performance is measured, and a path that does not focus on targets, which could otherwise restrict and narrow our performance outcomes. The here today, gone tomorrow targets that become meaningless in a rapidly changing landscape will not assist the path of the bill into practice and becoming part of lived experience.
People who are experiencing food poverty are concerned not about targets but about actual performance and their personal reality of ?easy access to good food. Facilitating a more holistic approach in the bill underpins the work that is already being done and gives it a legislative basis. Parents are going out to work without having eaten enough because they have given up meals so that their children can eat—what an indictment that is of our political and economic system.?That must change and the bill addresses that.?
?As we now know only too well in our contemporary context, the social, economic and political landscape can change dramatically, as it may do in the coming months. In asking what could be used as markers for outcomes from the law, we must not fall into the trap of having targets become the focus, rather than driving forward a fundamental culture change.?
We must value the people who work to produce and process food, as well as the farm animals, wildlife and natural resources that enable us to eat well. We need a just transition to a food system that is founded on the principles of social and environmental justice, and the bill will provide that.?
We need local authorities to play their part in supporting that change in ways that drive forward a cultural movement in our nation towards getting back to growers, which can be supported by including allotments and community gardens in planning decisions. ??Growing supports our environment and our mental health objectives, and it can provide therapy and community bonding for young and old alike. In particular, it also provides green spaces for people to enjoy, and we saw how important that was during the pandemic.
To enable us to imagine a nation of good food that we can all support, the framework bill includes a vision of a country where we appreciate and can take part in the process of farm to fork, boat to bowl and propagation to our plate.
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