A GREAT global food transformation! Nothing less will address the issues of climate change, sustainability and social justice, according to a report published by the Lancet. It demands ‘concerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative change’.
Meat production must be drastically cut, to be replaced by fruit and vegetables. Agricultural land must be reduced by a third, handed over to reforestation and rewilding. Fertiliser use must be halved along with water used for irrigation.
The report proposes a ‘planetary health diet’ or PHD, to which we must all adhere whether we live in rich or poor countries; the authors say it is the cornerstone of their recommendations and a framework for what must be done.
A typical PHD would limit your red meat ration to one chipolata a day; you would be allowed half a glass of milk or a small piece of cheese, virtually no sugar and definitely no sweets. No mention is made of alcohol, but knowing the busybodies at the Lancet, this will be banned outright – all in our best interests, of course.
But rest assured – there will be plenty of bread, fruit and vegetables to fill you up! Quite how the world will be fed on an almost wholly plant-based diet remains to be seen, given that arable production will be hit hard by any ban on fertilisers.
Ostensibly this is all supposed to be about climate, sustainability and biodiversity. But delve into the report and it is clear that the real agenda is ‘social justice’. According to the Lancet, a proper diet is a human right. The report’s authors complain that half the world struggles to access a healthy diet. They talk about a ‘fair distribution of resources, such as the rights to food’ and object that the richest 30 per cent contribute to 70 per cent of the environmental pressures from food systems. Translation: we in the West are eating too much. In short, under their global food transformation, everyone in the world will have the same amount to eat.
The big question, of course, is how all of this will be enforced. The British public are not going to accept willingly what amounts to something even worse than wartime rationing. Even if the government shut down all beef and lamb farming in the country tomorrow, we would simply resort to importing it instead, along with all the other foods denied to us.
Nor are peasant farmers in Africa going to give up the few cows and goats they rely on for their living.
The only way to enforce such a system would be world communism, a Soviet-style collectivisation of farms and a state-run rationing system. Somehow food production and distribution would have to be co-ordinated globally. Rich countries would have to subsidise food for the poorer ones. And what about those countries whose agricultural land is unsuited to growing crops?
The Lancet says this transformation will save lives. Yes, many of us are too fat, but at least we can eat less if we choose. The Lancet‘s cure would be worse than the disease.
And while, in theory, people in poorer countries might be better fed, the facts of life suggest the opposite would result. Most people in the world are much better fed than ever before; the exception is usually in war-torn and terrorist-affected regions; a planetary health diet will not make the slightest difference there.
Farmers in third world countries are benefiting from higher crop yields thanks to mechanisation, fertilisers and irrigation. So much so that they are no longer tied down to subsistence farming and can sell crops for cash. Take away these modern benefits and the incentive to work and food production will plummet, just as it did in Soviet Russia.
Far from saving 15million lives, hundreds of millions could end up dying if the Lancet’s plans come to fruition.
It is easy to see the hand of Bill Gates and his chums behind this. How long will it be before we are all eating his industrial sludge, fake meat and insect burgers?
It all sounds like fantasy – except that cities such as London have already signed up to achieving the PHD for all by 2030.
Still, at least when we have given up our freedoms and our money, when we are nibbling our locust burger in the cold and dark, we can take comfort from the fact that the rest of the world is just as badly off as ourselves!
Below, by the way, is what the diet gestapo will allow you to eat:
You can read the full report here.
