Post No 13 What are the environmental impacts of the demand for food?

This week’s posts are going to focus around the work of Ainhoa Magrach and María José Sanz and their paper that was published in People & Nature in 2020 entitled "Environmental and social consequences of the increase in the demand for ‘superfoods’ world‐wide." You can check the full paper here. 

It is important to recognise that in some countries such as the UK, food has been produced for thousands of years in a complex mix of land use. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 across England, there was a census of land use that makes fascinating reading - the Domesday Book commissioned in 1085 [1]. The source states:

"There were probably about seven or eight million acres tilled at the time of Domesday. Unlike other parts of north west Europe, where vast areas of wilderness remained." 

The land use is described as meadow, pasture, woodland and ploughland in the Domesday Book and different kinds of woodland too. In 1086 it is estimated there was around 15% of England that was woodland, this fell to about 5% in 1905 [2]. Across the UK since then there has been reforestation rising from 4.7% in 1905 to 13.1% in 2017 [2], with Wales and Scotland seeing the greatest increase in area for woodland. This represents around 3.1 million hectares. 

To address climate change the UK government is aiming to plant around 30,000 hectares of new woodland in the UK every year until 2050. That is nearly a million hectares over the next 30 years. [3] 

This would mean we have roughly the same amount of woodland as in 1086.

[1] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/landscape.htm

[2] https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/forestry-statistics/forestry-statistics-2017/woodland-areas-and-planting/woodland-area/area-of-woodland-changes-over-time/

[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1057842/WoodlandsTreesForests.pdf