So, that’s a no to food sufficiency then?

August 30, 2026 by Beyond GM

When Beyond GM wrote to the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, to congratulate him on his new job, we took the opportunity to make one central proposal: that his government should consider food sufficiency as the foundation of national food and farming policy.

Our letter argued that food security has become such an expansive idea that it can be used to justify almost any intervention that promises to deliver greater production, faster innovation or more resilient supply chains. Food sufficiency asks harder and more practical questions: enough of what, for whom, by what means and at whose expense?

It places the ability of everyone to obtain enough nutritious, appropriate and affordable food at the centre of policy. It also recognises that future provision depends on protecting land, nature, farming skills, regional infrastructure, diverse supply chains and viable livelihoods.

We wrote to the Prime Minister because food sufficiency is not a narrow agricultural policy but a question about what government believes the food system is for. It reaches across farming, public health, poverty, environment, trade and national resilience. It is also our responsibility to engage constructively with a new government, and our supporters expect us to do so.

We have now had a response.

Our letter, it seems, never made it to the Prime Minister. It was passed, instead, to Defra. The response we received was from an anonymous staffer (or possibly even an artificial intelligence app) in the Ministerial Contact Unit rather than any named person.

Because we are in the middle of a legal challenge to Defra’s Genetic Technology Regulations 2025, Downing Street’s decision to pass our letter onto Defra meant our sincere proposal was dealt with by the one department least capable of answering it openly. Whatever the intention, the result is institutionally hostile to genuine engagement.

Silence on sufficiency

Food sufficiency was not a passing phrase in our letter. It was the central proposition.

The anonymous response was a cut and paste summary of policies already in place. It does not use the word “sufficiency” once. It does not acknowledge it as a distinct proposal, consider how it differs from food security or say whether the government accepts or rejects it.

Instead, the letter lists the government’s existing initiatives – the Land Use Framework, Good Food Cycle and Farming Roadmap 2050 – before returning to the familiar language of productivity, profitability, investment, economic growth, innovation and food security.

It places economic growth, food production, nature recovery, public health, resilience and rural prosperity together in a single bundle, as though these objectives are automatically compatible and no difficult political choices need to be made.

It adopts some of the language surrounding sufficiency. The reply mentions affordable healthy food, regional supply chains, infrastructure, resilience and environmental protection. But it detaches those desirable outcomes from the questions that give sufficiency its meaning: Who benefits? Who bears the cost? What kind of food system is being sustained? What happens when productivity, profitability, public health and ecological protection pull in different directions?

A technology agenda in plain sight

If the reply is silent on food sufficiency, it is remarkably clear about technology:

“We are committed to utilising technology, innovation and research as effective tools towards fulfilling the UK’s objectives.”

It goes on to name the portfolio: agritech, engineering biology, digital technologies and precision agriculture. This leads directly into an endorsement of precision breeding and gene editing, using the unproven claim that these technologies make the same kinds of changes as “traditional breeding”, only more efficiently and precisely.

For years, many food and farming organisations have been reluctant to acknowledge that there is a coherent government technology agenda. Yet here it is, set out in a few short paragraphs.

The contrast with our letter is striking. We specifically named organic farming, agroecology, conventional and participatory breeding, farmer-led innovation, crop diversity, soil restoration and regional food infrastructure.

None of these is raised in the response.

Even organic farming – our clearest example of an established, standards-based, whole-system approach operating at scale – receives no acknowledgement. Nor does its practical need for regulation, traceability and protection from contamination.

Public engagement without public influence

The response also says that understanding public views is of “foundational importance”. It points to engagement with more than 400 stakeholders and cites the Food Standards Agency’s Food and You surveys.

But counting stakeholders does not tell us who helped frame the policy, what influence they had or whether critical perspectives were present before the direction of travel was settled. A look at the members of the Food Strategy Advisory Board shows how weighted it is towards industry and, therefore, where the real power lies.

A survey can tell government what people think. It does not give members of the public a seat at the table. Nor is consulting citizens about an established programme the same as allowing them to shape its purposes, priorities and alternatives. Where citizens have been “allowed” to have some limited input into and influence on food and farming policy – the proof of the pudding is in how far their ideas have been kicked down the road, and/or the absence of confirmed budgetary commitments for implementation.

A revealing non-answer

The reply to our letter is a cobbled-together narrative that the government’s existing programmes already encompass our concerns. But our letter questioned the foundation and direction of those programmes.

Food sufficiency would begin with a democratic public purpose and require technologies to demonstrate their value against needs, alternatives, costs and possible harms.

An anonymous letter means there is no one to write back to – no possibility of further engagement – and that, of course, was the point.

Beyond GM’s Director Pat Thomas said of the Prime Minister’s non-response:

“Our very generous and active supporters often express real disappointment at the form letters they receive from MPs, which fail to address the substantive issues they have raised. We are sharing the response that the Prime Minister delegated to an anonymous Defra staffer, in part as a sad kind of solidarity, to show that we – as do many civil society groups – experience the same thing.

“We offered the concept of food sufficiency as a different foundation for food policy and invited our new Prime Minister to engage with the idea. When government repeatedly answers a different question from the one citizens and civil-society organisations have asked, consultation begins to look more like a performance of listening, and engagement becomes an exercise in managing dissent rather than considering its merits. It simply is not good enough.”

We invite you to judge the anonymous response for yourself – and if you are a resident of Makerfield where Andy Burnham is also your MP, please pass this story onto him.