The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have published its annual progress report, highlighting the ongoing progress made under the Five-Fold Environmental Ambition (FEA) and taken forward under Ambition 2025, FDFs new sustainability commitments launched in 2016.

The 2016 results demonstrate the collective progress FDF members have made in delivering major improvements in resource efficiency. As well as achieving an absolute reduction of 30.1% in water used in the production of food and drink and a 46% reduction in absolute CO2 emissions (against a 1990 baseline), members participating in FDFs waste survey have met the target to send zero food and packaging waste to landfill by the end of 2015.

Looking towards 2025, members have expressed a strong desire to go even further and this is reflected in new commitments which cover the issues of sustainable supply chains and natural capital. Achieving these commitments will require a coordinated and concerted effort across the whole supply chain, and food and drink manufacturers are committed to playing their part.

Helen Munday, Director of Food Safety, Science and Sustainability & Chief Scientific Officer, Food and Drink Federation, said: “The results published today show that our industry has delivered significantly improved environmental performance. The FEA has been an industry-leading ambition and has served as a collective roadmap for food and drink manufacturers. Looking forward, we feel the new commitments under Ambition 2025 cover important areas in which we can make a positive impact as a sector.”

Food production and agriculture are vital to the UK economy. Food is the UK’s biggest manufacturing sector. The agri-food sector contributes £109 billion ($136 billion) to the economy every year, supported by an agriculture and fishing base worth around £11 billion ($13.8 billion).

The strength of this sector has benefited UK households as well as the broader economy, with food prices falling by nearly a quarter since 1980. Yet cheap food has come at the expense of the people and natural systems that produce it. The share of the food price received by farmers has fallen steeply over 30 years, matched by declines in average farming incomes, while levels of farm debt have risen sharply. This period has also seen prolonged and severe declines in the environmental health of farmland, characterised by soil degradation, compaction and erosion, and the chronic decline of important species. 

By sweating the environmental assets that underpin our food system, we have created unacknowledged costs and risks for food businesses. Soil degradation is costing farmers in the region of £246 million ($309 million) every year, principally through lower yields and higher fertilizer costs. Over the long term, failure to deal with this problem effectively not only increases costs for the food sector, it also risks permanently locking in lower productivity for UK agriculture. 

Green Alliance are proposing a new model for policy makers, based on the concept of environmental efficiency, enabling food businesses to maintain the natural assets they depend on, and protect themselves from increased costs. Improving environmental efficiency will bolster the long term economic resilience of the UK food sector, and is likely to reduce overall costs, compared to dealing with the consequences of continued environmental decline.

There is a strong economic case for the food sector as a whole to take action on environmental restoration. However, the mismatch between control over how land is managed, which lies with farmers, and the financial resources within the sector for environmental restoration, which sit with their customers and other downstream businesses, is a major barrier to investment.

Leaving the EU is an opportunity to address the problem. Brexit will result in profound changes to the UK food sector’s operating environment, through changes to agricultural subsidies and the terms of trade with the EU and other international markets for UK based businesses. A well structured Brexit could introduce new land use policies to restore the environmental health and productive capacity  of UK land.