Lack of food

THE idea of sitting 4500 homes on a greenfield site in the middle of East Anglia exemplifies that lack of forward thinking on the part of this government and planners.

East Anglia is a prime agricultural region and with the onset of climate change we shall become the bread basket of Northern Europe.

All land taken for housing, roads and new airport runways is diminishing the prospects for self-sufficiency in crop production in the coming decades.

Already this week dire warnings of future food shortages have been issued by the OECD, government chief scientific officer and the CEO of Premier Foods, Robert Schofield, who was reported in the FT as saying we need to 'place more land under the plough' as wheat supplies no longer match current demand.

Let us therefore plan more strategically for the long term by balancing environmental and economic priorities rather than tackling one issue, housing, in isolation from the broader picture.

Keith Vines

The Spike

Saffron Walden