Sepoy Agent

Yesterday’s headlines, “Era of cheap food ends as prices surge” have escalated today to “Rationing introduced in bid to protect vanishing rice supplies.”  (Both headlines from The Times)

A few thoughts:-

Yesterday’s warning was that the cost of basic foods will rise steeply again because of acute shortages in commodity markets.  One wouldn’t mind so much if one thought that the cost would go down when the supply situation improves.   Cynical maybe, but I wouldn’t put money on it.   In fact, the ground has already been prepared, (oh dear, another pun), by experts saying the days of cheap food have gone and will not return.

Second, amazing that WalMart is introducing rationing of rice in America  -  the first time, apparently, that food has ever been rationed in the USA.  And it was recently suggested that a Cameron government in the UK might bring in food rationing to bring home to people the seriousness of the economic situation.   In Britain rationing, while never welcomed, was tolerated in two world wars because of the national determination to defeat the enemy.   It continued through the Attlee post war government, and then was resented because the war was over and people’s hopes had focussed on a new better life.   In fact, it bit much deeper in those years;   the rationing of coal during one of the most bitterly cold winters being a case in point.   Even with the return of Churchill’s Conservative government in 1951 it took a couple of years before rationing finally disappeared.    (I’m disregarding the temporary later rationing of petrol.)   So, for people who lived through any of that, there is a deep antipathy to any idea of rationing.   Younger people I suspect do not realize what it would mean  -  it would sure come as a shock.

Finally, it seems at last as if the farming policy of the last few decades is coming home to roost.    It was always madness to give up so much of our self-sufficiency.   Back in those war-time and rationing days every possible acre was put over to growing food, sometimes tearing up historic landscapes to do it.   Even individual families were urged to “dig for victory”.   Well, that’s going a bit far, but the recent regime of set aside and subsidies not to grow food have led to our being in a position where we are most certainly not self-sufficient.   To some extent that was brought on by the British palate being tempted by foreign dishes, experienced on package holidays, and leading to vast imports of foreign ingredients.   Apparently now Britain’s favourite dish, almost regarded as traditional, is a curry.   How the old colonial Sahibs and Memsahibs would have relished that.

Whilst welcoming the ingenuity shown by farmers in diversifying, whether that be into soft fruits, venison, or the like, or utilising out-of-use farm buildings for mini commercial workshops and offices, barn conversions, and bed and breakfast, it is surely clear that we must bring more agricultural land back into farming use, and must look to be more self-sufficient.