There is too much farmland allocated for development in the Greater Cambridge Local Plan. It is based on the assumption of continued and permanent economic growth which is not sustainable and physically impossible. The plan fully acknowledges that climate change is going to be a serious problem in the future but does not address the elementary and fundamental problems of food and water security. Instead it proposes to make the food security problems worst by permanently destroying even more farmland by building on it. Using land for conservation of biodiversity is different as the natural ecosystems are part of the planets life support systems.
Britain does not produce enough food to feed itself. At present with all the inputs: fertilisers, pesticides, farm machinery, fuel, seeds produced by plant breeders etc. on a vegetarian diet UK agriculture can only support around 50 million people. The current population of the UK is 67 million and increasing and in an emergency only 75% of this could be fed from our own farmland. The UK has a serious food security problem which is masked by the economic situation of our agriculture. The area of land covered by the proposed Oxford-Cambridge Arc, UK Innovation Corridor and Cambridge to Norwich Tech Corridor consists of some of the most fertile, productive and important farmland in the country. Climate change is going to seriously exacerbate our food security problems by direct impact and the loss of agricultural land in other parts of the world. The climate refugees will attempt to come to countries like the UK. Proposing building a million homes (or more) in this area is an awful idea because eventually we will need the land to grow food. The area is also short of water, a problem that is predicted to be made worse by climate change. Sea level rise could very well mean the loss of the agricultural land in the Fen basin due to it being under salt water. There is a distinct possibility that Cambridge could be under salt water on a timescale currently estimated at 200 years. The Climatologists estimate that the world is currently on a trajectory for around 4 degrees C of warming by 2100. This temperature rise in combination with the associated acidification of the Oceans could literally be catastrophic. An ability for a nation to be able to grow its food is a question of survival. It must be remembered that during the Second World War Britain nearly starved and the population disliked the food rationing. To attempt to stress a point destroying the countries best farmland by massive building schemes in the Cambridge Area is not simply a bad idea, it would dangerously damage the UKs food security.