Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1493590
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 FEBRUARY 2023 OPINION 11 Anton Refalo Addressing food security and sustainability HUMANITY is going through another phase of rising uncertainty; the COV- ID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, nat- ural disasters and climate change as well as ever-rising prices and soaring inflation are fuelling this sense of insecurity. This uncertainty has also exposed the vulnerability of global food systems and the general public is increasingly realising that access to food cannot be taken for granted. Especially in the more advanced countries, food security is being pushed to the forefront of public policymaking. In Malta, the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights has been closely monitoring these developments to ensure that the local community has peace of mind and feels assured that the supply of food is not threatened and its quality of life is protected. The Ministry is striving to have a food system that is more resilient and sustainable and which gives due consideration to the interests of all stakeholders, be they consumers or pro- ducers. The ultimate aim of Maltese pol- icymakers is to have a food system that is healthy, green, fair and affordable. Last year, this ministry started working on a National Food Policy which will seek to identity common challenges, set a vi- sion and provide strategic direction to the local food sector. It will help establish priorities, identify key measures that need to be implemented and exploit opportu- nities arising through better alignment of cross-sector policies. Food brings to- gether policies relating among others to health, education, environment, climate change, energy, culture and enterprise. The National Food Policy while being founded on the key principles of the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy will seek to adapt them to local realities. This policy will have three pillars: driving a long-term shift in food culture, also by promoting our food heritage and tackling food waste, ensuring the economic sustainability of local production and enhancing the resil- ience and security of Malta's food system. In March 2021, the European Com- mission published a plan entitled `The Action Plan for the Development of Or- ganic Production in the EU'. This plan set a comprehensive agenda that is to be implemented by both member states and the Commission itself, if the target set in the European Green Deal of having 25% of agricultural land under organic farm- ing by 2030, is to be achieved. Malta's own Organic Action Plan will be the first of its kind and will essentially fol- low upon the measures identified through the EU's action plan. This plan, which is expected to be made public later this year, will seek to encourage and to drive the shift to organic food, which is considered to be one of the most sustainable systems of food production. Sustainability arises from the fact that organic food is pro- duced with great respect towards nature and takes into full account the interests of all the stakeholders. The Organic Action Plan will identify several measures which will help create a more favourable ecosystem around the producer, strengthen institutional lead- ership and stimulate the local market for organic products. These measures will also include in- creased financial support to compensate for the real local costs for farmers to move into and stay in organic farming. The ad- ditional financial resources required to incentivise and support organic farming will be made available through the re- cently approved national CAP Strategy Plan 2023-2027. Recently the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights appointed Malta's National Ambassador for Or- ganic and Sustainable Food. A specific objective of this post is for the Ambas- sador to lead this drive towards organic production. Working together with local producers, consumers, businesses and entities, the Ambassador will also seek to identify local opportunities to create organically certified food products that exploit local conditions and traditions while giving due consideration to the en- vironment. As part of the process of formulating the food policy as well as the organic action plan, the ministry has been having con- sultation meetings with key stakeholders as well as gathering information and col- lating data that is deemed essential in en- suring that they are based on the realities of Malta. The intelligence and knowledge being gathered will prove invaluable to other initiatives and projects undertaken by the ministry in support of the agricul- ture and fishery communities. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights is confident that the National Food Policy and The National Organic Action Plan will be another two important milestones in the continued modernisation of the local food sector. This not only seeks to boost the resilience and sustainability of the food sector, but also to increase its contribution to the economy and the general well-being of Maltese society. tention. What actually happened as a consequence, however, was… rather different (so much so, that Puffin has only just announced that it will be pub- lishing a collection of 'unedited Roald Dahl works', after all.) Within a week, the Daily Mail ran an- other article on the subject: this time under the headline: "Hold onto your Roald Dahl books, because they could be worth a fortune one day - and 'un- edited versions' are already listed for nearly £7,000 on eBay…" Now: I myself happen to be the proud owner or at least six or seven (obviously unedited) Roald Dahl titles: including one – 'The Witches' – that I distinctly remember buying, from an animal char- ity shop in Sliema, for the grand total of… '75c'. (And the original price is still there, in pencil, on Page One). So if the same copy were to suddenly fetch a price of, say, 'E7,000', on today's market – just because it is an original, unedited version: of the kind that Puffin Books originally intended to 'phase out of printed existence', altogether - as far as I can work out, that would represent a value-increase of around… wait for it… 10,000%!!! And while I am certainly no expert in Economics: I know enough to assert that – in a free and unregulated market, anyway – the price of any given item, will always be dependent on two specif- ic factors: demand, and supply. So for the asking price of any book (or indeed, anything at all) to sudden- ly shoot up by around 10,000%... it can only mean that: a) popular demand for that book must have skyrocketed, from one day to the next, and; b) that the sup- ply (in this case: 'availability of printed copies') must have suddenly become more 'restricted', than it was before. And on both those counts: it was Puf- fin's decision to censor Roald Dahl's works – instead of just 'leaving them well alone' - that was directly responsi- ble for what can only be described as a 'market-anomaly'. But the best part of it all, is that: Puffin Books itself will never see a single centime of profit, from any transaction that will ever be made – on e-Bay, or anywhere else – involving the sale of second-hand, unedited copies of Roald Dahl books. Effectively, then, the publishers on- ly succeeded in promoting a massive resurgence of interest, in precisely the more 'objectionable' aspects of Roald Dahl's children's fiction (you know: the parts that they themselves were actual- ly trying to 'tone down')… while at the same time, generating a massive (in the- ory, anyway) 'windfall', for people who are lucky enough to own original copies of Roald Dahl… but not, it seems, for themselves. Does that sound like a 'intended consequence', to you? Because it sure doesn't, to me… Small wonder, I suppose, that Puffin Books would eventually backtrack on their original plans. After all, their in- tention was to 'sanitize Roald Dahl': and certainly not to 'remind us all of how much we actually prefer his books… UNSANITISED!' Anton Refalo is minister for agriculture Critics rejected changes to Roald Dahl books as censorship