> The UK hasn't been able to feed its population from native production only since before WW2.
What does this mean though?
That the UK does not generate enough calories to meet a certain minimum baseline?
That the UK does not generate enough calories to meet the current consumption?
That the UK eats things that they do not grow?
Result: The UK grows enough wheat alone to give enough calories to support its population, with plenty to spare. It also produces all the major food groups in quite large quantities. If cut off from the world, the UK people wouldn't starve, but they might have to switch out their caviar for something else.
That's quite an impressive report and it's good to see someone's taking this seriously, even if they might end up ignored by whoever the agriculture secretary of the day is.
> but they might have to switch out their caviar for something else
That's frivolous: the report talks about meeting 100% of caloric requirements from grain in an emergency scenario. The mostly-bread diet would be comparable or worse than WW2 rationing, it's not just luxuries that would be impacted.
For purposes of comparison with Sri Lanka, I also note: "The UK imports roughly 50% of its ammonium nitrate, with 75% of imports for fertiliser use coming from the EU (primarily from Lithuania, Poland, and the Netherlands) and the remaining 25% from Georgia and Russia."
"Because human waste contains shigella bacteria..." we wouldn't put human waste directly on the land. We currently do spread treated human waste that has been digested on land, commonly called biosolids.
Water treatment plants let quite a lot of biological contamination through... If you use that to water crops that people eat, you get quite a nice disease spreading loop...
Specifically, no water treatment process today tests for viruses in treated water, and there are plenty of viruses that can survive sitting in a bubble tank for a few hours..
Boiling the water for 10 minutes first would satisfy me that very little biological contamination can make it out, but it is a huge amount of energy required to boil all the wastewater.
Probably not, but can be a source. Which is why it is regulated and steps are taken to a) reduce E. coli in the sludge and b) apply it at certain times, etc. per the EPA link.
Treatment methods eliminate more than 95% of the pathogens in sewage sludge; the risk of disease from those that remain in biosolids is short-term because most of them do not survive beyond 30 days in the soil environment. In addition to requiring pathogen reduction treatment, Pennsylvania's biosolids regulations contain several risk reduction and management requirements that reduce the likelihood of disease to very low levels. These requirements include:
treatment and management practices to reduce the attraction of disease vectors and thus the probability that pathogens would be transferred from biosolids to humans or animals
application setback requirements from occupied dwellings and from water sources
minimum time requirements from biosolids application to harvest, ranging from 30 days for forage and feed crops to 38 months for some food crops
no grazing allowed within 30 days of biosolids application to pastures
If carefully followed, these requirements make the risk of disease from land-applied biosolids similar to or lower than that of land-applied manures. In fact, there are no documented cases of human or animal diseases being contracted from land-applied biosolids.
Changes in microorganisms have undoubtedly contributed to this increase, as have changes in growing, harvesting, distribution, processing and consumption practices. Listeria monocytogenes, Clostridium botulinum and Bacillus cereus are naturally present in some soils. Their presence on fresh produce is not uncommon. Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter jejuni, Vibrio cholerae, parasites and viruses can contaminate produce through raw or improperly composted manure, irrigation water containing untreated sewage or manure, and contaminated wash water. Contact with mammals, reptiles, fowl, insects and unpasteurized animal products are other sources of contamination.
Add in the cost of the human waste disposal that you make unnecessary (ah, I guess that's the "nitrogen pollution" bit). But I understand that phosphates are at least as serious a problem; and I believe nitrates are much less persistent than phosphates.
If I remember a fragment of chemistry from 50 years ago, it's something like "all inorganic nitrate salts are soluble in water at STC". Ammonia's also water-soluble (and volatile); rivers and groundwater can recover from nitrogen pollution more quickly than from phosphate pollution.
One other thing: phosphate fertilisers basically have to be dug out of the ground, and as reserves begin to run low, prices are increasing. But human poo is very high in phosphates.
I mean, even if there's a yick factor, let's face it: every glass of water we drink, whether from the tap or the mineral spring, has probably passed through the kidneys of dozens of animals, including fish, mammals and insects, and certainly hundreds of dinosaurs and millions of bateria. Why should we be concerned if the phosphate salt we use was once a part of human poo, which probably contained nasties at some point? And nobody's proposing that humans should chow-down on phosphate salts extracted from human poo; stick to bananas, and put the fertiliser on the banana tree.
One weakness in the report (unless I just missed it) where it covers 'essential inputs' and their costs: it does not address what proportion of those inputs are imported.
Considering a hypothetical where the UK is isolated, it seems like a significant omission.
UK was in EU until recently. 40% of EU budget is dedicated to food security under the name of Common Agricultural Policy. In practice, this is an extremely complex pool of regulations and subsidies that work really well to ensure that the EU can feed itself.
Pretty much every investment in agriculture, from buying tractors to the collection and distribution of organic fertilizers is heavily subsiduzed and controlled.
That might have been true at some point, but with all the "we have to fight Russia" rhetoric they have put that food security in jeopardy. It's by far not the only western country that does so. The Farmers protests in NL triggered by the request to massively slash nitrogen in farming are another example. It does remind be of Sri Lanka a little bit, albeit under a different pretext.
The UK is not self-sufficient in wheat, and depending on harvests has to imports millions of tons.
"Enough wheat to give enough calories to everyone" only means that in an extreme situation and with very strict rationing nutritional needs could be met. Which is self-sufficiency at the limit only.
Indeed. In World War II Britain was dependant upon food imports even with rationing. After a period in which German U-boats happened to be unusually effective at destroying civilian transports, it got down to maybe a week's supply.
The government assumption was that - once the population realises they're going to be starved - they will revolt and insist on agreeing terms with Germany in exchange for food. Given what we later saw in Japan (which did starve its civilian population and they did not in fact rise up and force Japan to surrender) perhaps they were too pessimistic, we will never know because the next convoy got through.
What does this mean though?
That the UK does not generate enough calories to meet a certain minimum baseline? That the UK does not generate enough calories to meet the current consumption? That the UK eats things that they do not grow?