15 minutes with...Henry Dimbleby

15 Mins with Henry Dimbleby — Food Security, GLP-1 Drugs & the Future of Farming

In this episode, we sit down with Henry Dimbleby — food policy expert, author of the National Food Strategy, and co-founder of Leon — for a wide-ranging conversation on the issues shaping the future of food and farming in the UK.

We discuss whether the government truly understands food resilience, and what it would take to better prepare for global trade shocks. Henry shares his perspective on the interconnectedness of the global food system — from Iranian saffron to Moroccan salad shortages — and makes the case for building domestic capacity and maintaining diverse trade routes.

The conversation turns to the surprising impact of GLP-1 weight loss drugs on crop markets, and what falling calorie demand could mean for British wheat and cereal farmers. Henry argues the answer lies in thinking ahead to where markets are heading and moving towards premium.

We also tackle the thorny question of red meat: is it sustainable, and what role should UK farmers play in the global picture? Henry offers a pragmatic view — it's for the government and the market to set direction, not for individual farmers to go bust over a moral imperative. But responsible production? That's non-negotiable.

Transcript

15 Mins with Henry Dimbleby — Food Security, GLP-1 Drugs & the Future of Farming

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This is a fifteen minute with from the Country Land and Business Association. In this edition, TLA President Gavin Lane meets Henry Dimbleby, the author of the National Food Strategy to discuss UK food security, the surprising impact of weight loss drugs on farming, and the future of red meat production.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Henry Dimbleby, always lovely to talk to you. And I know from personal experience that you have a deep love, passion, I would say, for food and for all things food related and how it's produced. But without going into your past, you have an amazing knowledge of both the global food chain and food production systems, both in this country and elsewhere. I thought while I'd start by sort of asking you, we we sit here whilst a sort of another conflict happens in the world, which is profoundly affecting world trade. You I know that you were involved previously in uh trying to secure food supplies during COVID and you were asked to sit on a task force. Do you think the government's really starting to understand what food resilience means for this country? I suppose to ask you personally, what what does food security, what does food resilience look like to you? How do you think we should be better prepared for these sort of uh shocks within global trade?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I think the government and the civil service, which obviously are different things, are much closer to understanding food resilience slash security now and understanding how complicated it is. You know, you the the the periodical reviews they do of food security are pretty good. They've now, you know, they've run trials to see, for example, if you shut down all the electricity, what you'd run out of first. So they're kind of beginning to understand how complicated it is. And if you look, for example, at Iran, you know, what are the biggest concerns there? Well, the two things that everyone's got their eye on in terms of food are gas prices and fertilizer prices, which at the moment aren't going anywhere near what they were going, like while whereas oil's up, those aren't. But those are the two things to watch. Plus, you know, if you are, you know, they're 70% or whatever of the total world saffron market. So if you're in the business of saffron, that's a problem, but that's a niche concern. They produce a lot of pistachios. I think for some chicken marinaders in the UK, they produce quite some specialist spices and herbs. But but actually that problem, the Iranian problem at the moment is contained, but it does make you realise how connected the food system is. And so, my view in terms of when we looked in the food strategy, you could basically, you know, foods there there are there are hundreds of academic definitions of food security, and it goes from everything from you know, in a U-boat situation, could we feed everyone with rationing? Yeah, like do we have enough calories all the way to are people a little bit upset about salad shortages in February? Which, like, yeah, it doesn't matter that strawberries there, it doesn't matter there aren't any strawberries because we had floods in Spain, it really doesn't matter, but people get upset about it. And so I do think they are getting a bit more understanding, and I think for me that there are a couple of critical things. One is capacity, so you actually want a decent balance of trade, but you want to build a capacity here in your soil, capacity in terms of knowledge, so that if things do go wrong, you have the capacity to respond, both in terms of capabilities and assets, and that's really important. Good functioning and multiple trade routes are really important. So the reason we had the last salad shortage in 2023 was because we'd put way too much salad coming out of Morocco that skewed the system. So a kind of good balanced level of importing. And then I think that that means in terms of like what the government does should be focused on, actually, mostly just helping farmers do what they want to do. So planning for reservoirs, building glass houses, making sure our gas prices when we're building glass houses aren't artificially uh higher than glass houses in the Netherlands. Most of it is just about creating a level playing field for British farmers. And then I think there's a little bit about taking an active role in improving our soils because you know, if you ha as a lot of farmers saw, if you have the combination of fertilizer hike and oh, have I lost you? No, you got me. The combination of a fertilizer hike and floods or droughts where you've got too little m water, too little less water, soil is incredibly important. But I am probably at the less screechy end in terms of my concern for uh I'd rather be in the UK than Egypt, put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

You know, half your grain comes from Ukraine and your population is going to double in the next 20 years. That's a and most of them are on the breadline. That's a difficult situation.

GLP-1 Drugs & Changing Crop Markets

What British Farmers Should Grow

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, no, I I I yeah, totally. Um, I suppose that brings us on to uh changes in systems and potential changes in UK cropping, uh, not on the basis of just uh looking at food resilience, but uh, but but certainly in in light of what you've said in the past about um GLP1 drugs. And uh for those of you that don't that on this call that don't understand about GLP1 drugs, that we're talking about Azempic and Monjaro mainly as the as the trade names of the two most available drugs. But um I I mean you've talked a lot about the uptake of those drugs and how quick that's been. Do you see that there's going to be a fundamental change in how cropping happens in this country? Do you think people, for instance, that are growing a lot of carbohydrates at the moment should be worried about that? Or or do you think that we should carry on growing what suits us um, you know, uh in terms of climate rather than trying to change our system to for the benefit of um whatever it is that comes down round the corner like GLP1?

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah. Well, it's all about the market, isn't it? I mean, the British farmers should grow what it is profitable for British farmers to grow, and then they can't do anything else. That's why the way in which the state pays them is so important. Um, but if I think about what's gonna happen globally, you are gonna get a reduction in calories. The pill form now is not injection in the states, is uh is going gangbusters, they're gonna be lots more of these drugs, they're gonna get cheaper. Already people in the least affluent demographic are paying 2,000 quid a year for them here in the UK. You have to prepare, I think, for a world where we fewer calories. And also, if you look at the data, that will be less wheat and corn. You've already got a massive sugar for fall anyway, and cheap, you know. Uh so you shouldn't be thinking like, what should I grow? You should be thinking about where will the markets be in the future, and you know, uh, wheat markets for those, you know, we have some of the most high-yielding wheat in the world. I think we held the record till New Zealand took it over 10 years ago or something, if the highest ever yield per hectare globally. And so those will continue to be profitable. But I spoke to a big, one of the biggest farmers in the UK the other day, and they were thinking, okay, we probably want to hedge our wheat a bit. Like, are we going to be growing this much wheat in the future? Do we need to be adding value? The other thing that is very clear that happens is that that people actually often spend a little bit more on food. They're eating less, but they're going premium. So I do think the long term, if you're on a family farm and you're thinking 10 years down the line, definitely you should be thinking, how can I move away from just the commodity market, which is going to become, which is going to shrink a bit and become increasingly volatile and create value elsewhere, which obviously is difficult, but that's uh I think needs to happen.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

We've seen a lot of a lot a big movement into premium uh dairy products, premium uh protein uh products. Well, we haven't yet seen uh our cereal farmers particularly moving into premium carbohydrate markets, but you still think that there will be people will still eat breakfast cereal, people will still be eating bread and toast and in the future?

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Yes, I think they will. I mean, I think the the way because I think there is limited, you know, if you think about premium, it often in food it requires direct uh direct line of sight from customer to um from from farm to customer. And in wheat, for example, that would involve such an extraordinary contortion of the value chain. It would just be you'd have to separate uh the wheat in so many ways, it would be very expensive. And I do think that the you will see though, a bit like what's happened with sustainable palm oil. So there, when you buy RSPO palm oil, it's actually not that the oil you're buying isn't uh sustainable, but you're paying for a certain hectare of oil to be produced sustainably. Bell M would need to have 36 different oil hoppers if they were to separate the um the oil completely. And I can see Nest Slay and Unilever and the cereals companies um combining to say, okay, you will be in a scheme like that. So you will be producing regenerative wheat, but that will go into the overall supply chain, but you will get your um you will get your your premium anyway. So I can see that there's no mass balance in the technically, and I can see that becoming a thing in the UK.

The Future of Red Meat

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Okay. And what about uh what about red meat? I mean, we talk endlessly, and I uh you did mention it in the book about uh we talk endlessly about whether we should be seeing less stock in certain parts of the country, or in some cases, people talking about more stock stock in parts of the country, the debate rages about climate change and beef production. I mean, would do you see, given our climate and given how much grass there is in this country, do you see the future as being quite quite good for red meat in this country, or do you still think that we should be leading the way in in trying to reduce the amount of meat that gets eaten here?

Responsible Farming & Environmental Regulation

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Well, I think that it's a really interesting. So globally, there is no doubt that the amount of particularly red meat that we eat is not sustainable. And that's secondarily to do with methane. The interesting thing about methane is it falls out of the atmosphere, so it's the only thing that you could do to put a break or to reverse climate change. But even if every cow was fed asparagopsis, the seaweed that reduces methane, didn't produce methane, it still takes up way too much land. Like you need some of that land to do other things to restore natural habitats that will produce rain in the future, for example, which is quite important, etc. etc. And the question then is okay, so that's on a global level. What is what is required at a national level? Because you know, I'm a firm believer, for example, that we should be it is ridiculous to be importing gas from America and fracking gas is much less green than natural gas from the North Sea, so we should be producing North Sea gas. It's absurd. And so the question is as part of that global story, what is when most of the meat globally is raised in feedlots in America and in Argentina and Brazil and so forth, what should we be doing? And I think that there really it's the government who sets the market. So the government needs to be thinking about, you know, the around my part of the world in Devon, yeah, if you are going to be paying farmers uh to produce meat or dairy, you know, where do you want to pay for it? Do you want to pay for it as much as that as for preventing flooding, or you know, what services does the state want from that money? And I think then the market will do what it needs to do, which is which is it'll balance itself. But I don't think it is for the farmer to again to do to just reduce meat out of uh a sense of purpose because you're you know, if that's what's making your money, then you'll go bust. I do think again that you'll get a shift towards premium in meat as time goes on. But they'll there'll always be non-premium. You've got the mass balance problem again, which is there's a whole bunch of meat that is we can't balance the carcass. Therefore, there'll always be a there'll always be a a non-premium market for it. But I think that's yeah, I I I wouldn't as a as a meat farmer be doing anything that other than thinking this might get more difficult in future and which bit of the meat value chain is likely to be more profitable. I wouldn't certainly wouldn't be going out of my way just to reduce my meat production on account of a moral imperative. That's that's that's the role of the customer and the government, not of the farmer. Okay, but what about the one thing is unless you are, for example, knowingly uh letting silage go into a water course or that that kind of if you're if you're knowingly polluting, that is that is not the case. But but otherwise, I think it's for the government to to to to pay you for the public goods that it wants. And if producing meat is the most profitable thing you can do, then that's that's what you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

But you but you're you're talking about having responsible production systems, though. That you should look at your production system as a as an individual and say, can I do this more responsibly? Can I, you know, that that whilst the market leads on giving you the demand, you've still got to produce it responsibly.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yes, and if you want your I mean, if you look, it's really interesting, you know, the the EA, the environment agency, for example, has begun to, around me, has begun to inspect dairy, particularly much more, yeah, and is beginning to pick up some pretty bad practices. And in that environment, you know, if you are farming for your family, you're a family farm and you want to hand something down, you should be doing that anyway, yeah, because because it's gonna come and get you at the end. That stuff is not, you know, this idea that, oh well, Trump's in in power, so no one cares about the environment anymore, is just nonsense. You know, it's it's we have a significant problem with nature and climate that's getting worse. Yeah. And you know, just because there's a bit of rhetoric, you know, from Trump, it's not, you know. I I think it'll happen obviously in the most it'll happen most, you know, it'll start in water because that is that's so visible, like things that are very visible to consumers, and the pressure there is really rising, I think, but it will also go to to other areas as well. Yeah, to nature. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

I think we're out of time, Henry. Thank you very much indeed. That's been a tour de force. And it's unfortunately we only get 15 minutes, but that's been really, really nice.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

Yeah, and as I'd say, by the way, that I see so many of your members, it's just an absolute pleasure. When I when I do go around, I might have given the sense that that you know everyone is uh just doing the minimum possible. That the the the spirit in farming, and I think it helps some of the recent reversals of government have uh improved uh morale a little bit. But even during that period, it's a real pleasure to meet your members and see what they're doing with your land. And that real sense that exists in very few businesses that they were this is something that they're gonna pass on and on and on, and it's not just for their lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

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