 Fyครwydrehu Fyrtaenwyraddod Spe iddyn nhw y ddatblygu llewar dwngh gael cwi mort, yr ythynas cymd swim olmai'n konkleo diwedd y prif ydw i'r credu ningwy ydach ac rwyfio hyd yn ddigon i'r ddatblygu folks, byddai presso y syllun neu ddweud sydd gyllid effeithido. Alison Johnstone, to open the debate. Ms Johnstone, seven minutes are thereby, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome the opportunity to debate Scotland's food future in this chamber today, and thank colleagues who have made this possible by supporting the motion in my name. My motion highlights the work of the Scottish Food Coalition and its report, Plenty. The coalition is made up of several organisations, organisations whose contribution to improving the health and wellbeing of people in Scotland is wide and widely recognised and deservedly so. This is a landmark report, one that should be discussed far and wide, and then steps taken to implement. The report begins with a statement. We have plenty of land in Scotland and plenty of sea and plenty of skilled people, scientists and innovators. There's no reason why we shouldn't have plenty of good food for everyone here. It is absolutely the case that, as the report states, at the moment, our food system is characterised by inequalities and exploitation. Given the importance of food, it really is one of the few things that we cannot live without, our food system should be founded on the principles of social and environmental justice. A food system founded on those principles would help enable us to address inequality, climate change, declining wildlife, animal welfare and poor health. There may be some who are off the view that business, as usual, is just grand, but, if it is indeed the case that we are what we eat, then many people in Scotland are clearly not eating well. In a country with plenty of land and sea, why is this the case? Why is it the case that 65 per cent of people in Scotland are overweight or obese and that, in 2014-15, almost 120,000 people required emergency food aid and almost a third of those were children? The reliance on food aid takes place in a country that rightly celebrates its food and drink sector, yet the focus is very much an export-based one, with much ado around whisky and salmon, despite the environmental damage that fish farms create in Scotland, to boost the profits of companies, many of whom are based outside the country. I would like to see more of a focus on an agroecology approach and one that invests more in growing our organic sector. 15 per cent of Scottish households do not own cutlery, such as the concern about our food culture, that it is impacting terribly on our health, and leading consultants have coined a new term, diobesity, reflecting the relationship between obesity and diabetes. This epidemic, which has a global reach and impact, also has a very local one. It costs health and happiness, and, like demographic change and population increase, is putting our NHS budgets under increasing pressure. Corporations can and do make huge profits from dominating the food market, often with unhealthy food and unsustainable ways of growing and producing the food that we eat. The public purse pays for the pollution and ill health, and lobbying at the highest levels of government has created the perverse logic needed for our leaders to think that international deals such as T-Tip are a good idea for our food system. However, it does not have to be this way. We will all be aware of amazing projects in our communities. There is a fantastic collection of projects in community energy in the Lothians region, connecting people to Scotland's true food future. There are community gardens taking over grante and street corners to create mini gardens, vegetable plots and communal meals. The Broomhouse Health Strategy Group, the Pilton Health Project, is working with people on budgeting, on cooking skills, getting them more active in their daily lives and so much more. Crops and pots are building a more rural feeling from concrete patches down in leith. We can grow almost anywhere. The Serenians at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and their Leith fair share depot and kitchen are doing an excellent job. They are helping people to learn to cook, to enjoy food together and to appreciate all the wondrous things that they can do. I visited a fantastic project in my constituency on Monday at Valfron, where they have a food connections project trying to encourage people to understand where they could food come from and how to cook it. I have now established a poly tunnel where they are growing their own materials for the kids to use. Do you think that that sort of project should be exemplified throughout Scotland? I thank the member for raising the subject. That is a fantastic example of just making the best use of land everywhere. If we can engage our pupils from the earliest stage in our playgrounds, then what better use of space? So much space is unused and it could be productive. Musselbarata transition town is another example. It is working wonders with a wee community garden by the river. Edinburgh community food is building a network across the city and there are many other groups doing a fantastic job providing emergency food relief. I would like to mention two transition Edinburgh south and the wonderful walled garden at Gracemount. Undoubtedly, there will be many more that I have failed to mention. They are all working wonders. Food should help us grow and get well when we are not. It should make us feel good. Really nutritious food helps us keep well. It gives us the ability to deal with busy lives no matter our age. It gives us personal resilience and local food networks are vital to develop resilience at a community level. However, we need to think about the future and about our ability to provide the food that we need closer to home. I spoke yesterday in the land reform debate about smallholder tenant farmer Jim Telfer, who feared who is in fear of losing the land that he rents and his livelihood as his land is the location of a speculative proposal for the film studio that has just been discussed in FMQs. Is his farm on poor quality land? No, it is on prime agricultural land and this, I hope, will be recognised, valued and the film studio built elsewhere. Obviously, Cumbernauld has been discussed, but Shofair, which is nearby, has excellent transport links in a school that focuses on the creative industries. The local damhead community of Rally Drown Gym campaigning hard. The vision that they have for the land where they live is that it should be formally recognised as Edinburgh's food belt. Think about urban crofts. Green belt land has never faced such development pressures, but we need to think about where the food citizens within and out with Edinburgh's green belt will eat, where that food is coming from, and the food belt is a compelling idea—a much better way of thinking about the value of our green belt and its benefits. Land in the food belt is a way to connect us to our food. Land here could have many more local businesses providing employment to people in cities and in more rural areas. For too many people, the green belt is a patch of land you commute through without much thought, but we can rethink this land. I hope that the minister understands the power of ideas and the power of money, because I learned yesterday that funding that has allowed Scotland's food coalition to form has been completely removed and that nourish Scotland's funding has gone from £90,000 to nothing. Nourish would like to tender for work, but it turns out that the only tender available to them is one that wraps up a massive amount of work on local food into a £3 million contract that is inappropriate for small and medium enterprise bidders. In closing, I congratulate and thank all those who are working to make us a better food nation from our school dinner to the soil association. Let's make sure that we are not just a well-fed but a properly nourished population, and I would be grateful if the minister could address in closing the funding situation that I outlined. Thank you very much. Any thanks. I thank you for time today. Four minute speeches please. Presiding Officer, I congratulate Alison Johnstone on introducing the motion. Also, all the local groups mentioned in the motion, especially those based on my constituency, which I shall talk about in a moment. Finally, the Scottish Food Coalition and their excellent report rightly emphasises the need to have the right to food in legislation. I hope that that will be taken on board by the next Scottish Parliament, and it also emphasises core principles of environmental awareness and sustainability at the heart of production. Unfortunately, the reality is very different. Instead of a right to food, we have an increasing number of food banks and unacceptable food poverty. That was highlighted in a recent report by the Pilton community health project, which is mentioned in the motion. Their report, Good Food for All, found that poverty and food poverty are intrinsically linked and that securing a fairer food system is very difficult in the light of very deeply rooted and persistent poverty. That is, of course, why that excellent project, which I have known for over a quarter of a century, has always emphasised the importance of dealing with the broader determinants of poor health and health inequalities, but it has also had excellent initiatives, specifically on food and other lifestyle factors. However, that report, which is certainly worth reading, also notes the rise in voluntary activity in helping people to eat and eat well. There are two excellent projects in my constituency that I want to highlight that do precisely that. The first is in the North Edinburgh area, and they work not far from the Pilton community health project, and they are the grant and community gardeners that Alison Johnstone referred to. They are local residents who are growing fruit and vegetables in several garden plots, some of them on the corner of the streets in the grant and area. There is an interesting point in the report that Alison Johnstone refers to in the motion from the Scottish Food Coalition, when they highlight the power of planning to ensure that bacon land is safeguarded for growing crops, and that is an important part of the subject. A great many positives are connected with the food growing in the grant. There is an educational dimension to it. Many people learn how to grow food and learn other information about food. In fact, the group had a 10-week course for local people specifically to encourage that knowledge. There is an opportunity to taste new fruits and vegetables, and it also builds up community cohesion. As people talk to neighbours, they may not have talked to before. As they work on the gardening, which of course is intrinsically healthy as well, they share meals with the produce and the volunteers distribute the food to a large number of families and volunteers. Crucially, it also has a strong environmental dimension. The aims include, and I quote, encourage care for the environment and awareness of local wildlife and biodiversity. The environmental dimension is also extremely important for leaf-based crops. Impots also mentioned in the motion that they educate people about the interaction between food and the environment, but it is even more important to put environmental sustainability into practice by growing food, planting trees and helping to reduce food waste and encouraging dietary change to reduce environmental impact and improve health. It is very grateful that they receive climate change funding in the past. The previous round has enabled them to build up a great team to establish infrastructure such as raised beds, sheds and a tree nursery and to build cross-relationships with the community. They have now put in another bid, and I hope that the minister will look favourably on it, since it is absolutely crucial to the next stage of their development funding, as it is essential to expand their community outreach, create habitats and, of course, continue to save carbon. For example, they work in local schools, hold community events and they are involving more and more people, increasingly more and more local people, but they need to have the further round of climate challenge funding in order to keep their excellent work going. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I have to say that I did not sign the motion, and one of the reasons I did not sign it is because I read the report, which is a very, very good report. For me, it is something missing. We need to have a stronger emphasis on where people are buying their food every day. They are buying them from the major retailer. We need to be a lot stronger on the major retailers and making sure not only that we have got better legislation, like other countries have, and better regulations, but that they sell local produce. That has got to be, to my mind, at the centre of everything we are talking about when we are talking about food. That is the reason. I am very much on the report, but I think there is not enough interface. I would agree with Alison Johnson. I am delighted that she brought it to Parliament. Let's take the statement that she talked about, which is right to start. We have plenty of land in Scotland. We do. With this Parliament, as Alison Johnson said, backing the Scottish Green Bill on land reform yesterday, more of this land will be used to grow food, and this is important. That is really at the heart of it. She said, as well, plenty of sea. The statement says that. We do have plenty of sea. Scottish Fisheries is back. I have been saying that for a long, long time. I have been working in the fishing industry for 30 years before coming to Parliament, but it is back both in quantities and in sizes. After the fantastic effort of our fishermen the last 10 years, the fantastic effort of this Parliament backing our fishermen, this Cabinet Secretary and the Scottish Government backing the Cabinet Secretary. We have good news there. Of course, it comes in the statement, plenty of skills people. That is important to realise as well. Our food industry in Scotland is part of our culture, is part of our universities, is part of our researchers. We are very much apt to do this, not only for export, but for local as well. We are fantastic experts in food production in this country from farmers, fishermen, scientists and innovators. I do agree with the end of the statement when it says that there are no reason why we shouldn't have plenty of good food for everyone. The solution is always easy, Presiding Officer. People are always the solution, so we need to talk about people and we need to understand more about food insecurity. I met a lot of people in my own region. For example, Dev Dev Somers is the chief executive of committee food initiatives in the north-east, CIFINE. It has got a fantastic organisation which develops more and more. It used to work for the Selenions, so it has been doing that for the last 40 years. It knows really what the food issue is and poverty is linked to it. In Peterhead, he has now since last October, the fruit mart, which previously was in the village alongside. The society shop is not only providing local produce as well, but it has got 17 people in the shop and is supporting employment guidance to address learning difficulties. There is a lot happening in the countryside, there is a lot of fighting in our cities and we really need to welcome that. Scientists are so important. Many of you will know, of course, Dr Flora Douglas from the University of Aberdeen, who comes very often to this Parliament and is so passionate about what food is and it is more than food, it is about our culture, about our society and how we see ourselves. On Tuesday night, there were Rob Gibson MSP who had food for thought, a fantastic event where another expert, Charles Spear, the chair of the Food Commission, was talking about the work and outcomes involving the school programme. As the Food Commission, I will recommend everybody to read the interim report of the Food Commission. It is a very, very interesting read. By closing, what I would say is that we need to have a different approach and that approach has got to involve everybody, involve businesses and our food producers. We need to buy local, buy Scottish, trust our farmers, trust our fishermen, trust our food producers, trust our experts, and we are not sure that we will have plenty of good food for everyone. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I come to this debate from a slightly different point of view having spent most of my life in the food production industry or the farming industry prior to becoming involved in politics. The opening of this debate, Alison Johnston used the phrase that, here in Scotland, there should be plenty of good food for everyone and I couldn't agree more. Scotland's farming industry is one of the most efficient and productive to be found anywhere in the world. The intensive methods that are used are high output, low impact methods, we have the highest standards of animal welfare to be found anywhere on the planet and we have a great deal to be proud of. That is why, although I have no wish to offend or cause any discord when others talk about organic methods, I do not object to organic farming, but what I do object to is the idea that somehow that method is better or more appropriate or worthy of greater support than the many traditional Scottish farmers using traditional Scottish methods to produce high-quality food and I will always defend them. Yes, I will. Alison Johnston I am sure that the member will agree that organic actually is traditional and I am sure that the member will agree that it actually could do with greater support in Scotland than it currently receives. I think that it is important to realise that if a particular method is productive and worthwhile, it should do so in a competitive environment with other methods of farming and we should demonstrate what is more effective by seeing what we achieve at the end of the day. However, let me continue. The truth is that there is a problem with food production and supply in Scotland and it is not at the far-mangend while there are problems associated with the returns that are gained from the marketplace and we must work to achieve more on that front, we are extremely good at producing food. In spite of the fact that many of us can criticise the supermarkets for much of what they do, the supermarkets themselves have an efficient method of distributing high-quality food to the marketplace. The food is produced and it gets to the shops where people can buy it. The problem is that not all people can afford to buy it and that is not caused by the cost of food. The truth is that food costs in terms of family income are about a tenth today what they were back in the 1950s, so food costs themselves are not the problem. The problem is that there are other costs that are in these family costs that are causing distortions. For example, food is a relatively insignificant cost yet housing costs are higher than ever. Fuel costs are high, transport costs are high, so as a natural result of that food quite often becomes a low priority although it is a relatively low cost. That is why so many of the organisations that have been mentioned today are so important to ensure that food is made available to those who find that food is the thing that drops off the table at the end of the day. As I said, I believe that we have a good system in place, one that does not need to be radically reformed from the bottom up but one that needs to be adapted to cater for the demands of that small minority who are currently suffering. I think that the charitable sector does an enormous amount of good work but we all know that that charitable sector should not be required to achieve those objectives, so while they do that, we can praise them for it. Let's find a way to ensure that, in the future, we can ensure that the best of Scotland's produce ends up in the hands of those who today, unfortunately, can least afford it. I welcome the coalition's important set of policy asks in advance of this next Scottish Parliament election. The fact that it is a combination and a coalition of environmental campaigners, anti-poverty campaigners, trade unions, farming and food producers gives us the impetus to think about food poverty, food quality and accessibility to food right across the political agenda and to think through all the key policy levers that we need to be pulling and putting into place. I want to make a quick side note in thanking Alison Johnson for getting that on our agenda today. I want to wholeheartedly agree with her about the funding for the project work that Norrish has been doing. It is crucial in terms of bringing together that agenda because it is cutting edge and setting a new agenda for the Scottish Government. I would be interested in the cabinet secretary's response in his closing remarks. I am almost tempted to get sidetracked by responding to all of Alison Johnson's point, but I am not going to go there today because it would get me too annoyed and I only have four minutes. I think that this agenda is important because it is bringing together fairness and social justice and applying that to the food chain and applying that right across our communities. It is totally appropriate that we are at the end of the fair trade fortnight. There are so many interconnections that we could be making, focusing on the rights of workers and food growers in some of our most disadvantaged countries on the fair trade agenda and bringing that close at our home. Thinking about the value that we give to food, thinking about the principles of fairness and social justice, they absolutely need to apply in Scotland too. I think that theme runs through Alison Johnson's motion today. It is good to see the coalition arguing for fair pay for those who work in our Scottish agriculture and horticulture industries. They are some of our lowest paid workers across the country. That is why Scottish Labour has campaigned so strongly—no thank you—for the agricultural wages board to be retained in Scotland. It has been a crucial way of preventing the exploitation of vulnerable workers, whether isolated workers in our rural communities or the particular challenge of protecting migrant workers. It has also been important in terms of the focus on health and safety, because those are isolated workers across our rural communities. It is significant that nourish and unite have argued together the importance not just of retaining the agricultural wages board but of the idea that we have a real living wage. In yesterday's land reform debate, we were delighted to see that the Scottish Government picked up the agenda of the issue of human rights and food security. That chimed very well with the motion that we have in front of us today, putting food security in as human rights. We now have the adoption of the international convention on economic, social and cultural rights, the voluntary guidelines on responsible tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the context of national food security. I would argue that that brings a new dimension to our food policy for the future. That is our challenge going forward. I want to welcome the work that has been done by nourish and the coalition to put that in a national context. I would also argue very strongly that we need to make the connections at a local level. I also want to celebrate the work that has been done by those local groups. In the Lothians, we have the Back Greens initiative in Gorgia and Daurai, which has transformed people's back greens and tenements and brought residents together. I also want to welcome the sustainable food cities initiative and to link in the work that has been done by our allotment growing networks. Let us look at challenging what is done for the future. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. I would like to see food growing in our schools and hospitals, linking into the eco schools movement and the community orchards movement. We need to think about how we use our urban land, but we also need to think about empowering people to be able to grow food. The allotments and gardens movement is a key way in which we can do it, and we need to tie that into community empowerment, health and wider food growing movement, which will help us to address the issue of affordable food and accessibility to food. It is the interconnection between those range of issues that will deliver on the fantastic work that has been done by the food coalition. I congratulate Alison Johnstone for bringing this debate to the chamber today, because it is a very important debate. I spoke recently in this chamber on the amount of food waste in question to the corporate body in relation to food waste in the Parliament itself, but we know that there is much more food waste taking place throughout the country, and although some of that food could be used to be given to individuals and families, clearly there are other issues that need to be dealt with. It is not just about giving leftovers to charities to patch up a failing system, it is about making sure that the system works for everyone in society. As others have mentioned, Scotland is a resource-rich nation, and, clearly, according to the Scottish Government, Scotland's farmable land amounts to roughly 5.6 million hectares, which equates to around 71 per cent of Scotland's total land area. It is an island nation that we are surrounded by sea, as others have mentioned, and we have large rivers and lochs that could provide plentiful food if we were actually to use those opportunities. However, clearly we have seen in terms of the debate today and taken, as I said, if Boyack said, I would not want to challenge Alex Johnstone here, but clearly there are issues in terms of what Alex Johnstone said and his contribution. However, the issues that we have got to identify, as well as the projects that have been identified by Alison Johnstone in her motion, there are a number of projects throughout Scotland that are working hard to try and make people aware of where the food on their plate comes from. However, it is not only hard to work to show them where it comes from, but it is encouraging them to start growing their own food. I recently visited a small project in Kurchaws, and it has a few raised beds, one polytunnel, and it is actually bringing in school children and unemployed, bringing them in there to give them the opportunity to start growing their own healthy food and showing them where that food comes from. We have also got the legislation that was passed by this Parliament in terms of community empowerment which said that we wanted to see the increase and availability of land for allopments. That is one way of taking forward the debate about people being able to not only access food but access their own food, grow it, be actively involved and understanding what the production methods are involved in that. However, there is another issue. That is the procurement policies that currently exist in Scotland. I have just met a group on Tuesday who told me that they still find it difficult to get into the procurement agenda, their projects, because of the way that the system works. If we can get local producers engaged in the procurement process that can supply to schools, hospitals and other public sector buildings, then clearly that would give the encouragement to develop those sectors and allow them to be actively involved in producing locally produced, locally sourced nutritious food. Comments have to be made about the other people who are working in the sector and food production. I would like to pay tribute to John Hancock, who is involved in the Commonwealth Orchard, who is a co-sponsor of the Parliament's apple day every September. He has attempted, on a number of occasions, to get fruit trees growing in common space, in schools and other areas to show children and adults that that food production could take place at a local level. Having those fruit trees in common space could help people to go along and help themselves to nutritious fruit without having that fruit travelling halfway around the world to provide that. We have to be bolder in the delivery of opportunities for communities to have the resources to produce food locally, and we need to work together to ensure that that works for the benefit of Scotland as a whole and end the situation with food poverty that currently exists in Scotland. I first begin by congratulating Alison Johnstone on securing this debate, which I think is a very welcome debate. It is very topical and timely. It is another illustration of the growing importance that we all attach to Scotland's food culture, our food systems and, indeed, improving our food culture and improving our food systems in Scotland. Likewise, the report, which is the focus of Alison Johnstone's motion, which is Plenty Food, Farming and Health in New Scotland, is published by the Scottish Food Coalition for a social and environmentally-just food system. It is also timely and is another sign of the momentum behind the food debate in Scotland. I want to say to the authors of the report that it is a first class report. I do not necessarily agree with absolutely everything in the report. Of course, it is talking about ways in which we can change Scotland's food culture and our food systems, which is something that is not going to happen overnight, but certainly gives us many ideas of how we can get a much better place in the future. I very much support much of what is in the document. Indeed, at my party's conference at the weekend, I spoke at a meeting that was hosted by the RSPB and, indeed, Nourish. There were a lot of common themes among all the speakers at that very well-attended event. It is indeed the case that, as a country, we celebrate our food and drink industry, our food and drink resources. We are a fantastic country when it comes to having the natural resources, the natural environment to produce the raw materials. We have our seas, our fertile land at a time when the rest of the planet is running out of fertile land, and we have the men and women with the skills to take the raw materials and turn it into fantastic produce that people want to enjoy in this country and overseas. That brings important economic value. Exports are an important part of that success, but it would be unfair to point out that Scottish Food Policy is all about exports, big business, salmon and whisky. They are immensely successful industries and, after all, we want people to be able to afford to buy food. They need jobs and we have those economic strengths that we should make the most of them in Scotland. However, a huge emphasis of Scottish Food Policy over the past few years has been on the other dimensions of food policy, which is the environmental impact, particularly at a time when we want to achieve our climate change targets, and tackling the irony that we have all this nutritious food that we are able to produce in our own doorstep. However, we have the record-breaking diabetes statistics that we wish we did not have at a time when we have all this healthy food but people are not enjoying it. At the same time, we have food poverty in Scotland, which is a mark of shame. Of course, the UK's austerity agenda is largely responsible for where we are with that at the moment. I likewise, like many other members, want to congratulate the many community initiatives across Scotland and charitable efforts that are taking place to ensure that people can access food at their time of need. Clearly, the answer to that is to make sure that people can afford to buy their own food in the first place, and the Scottish Government is also bringing forward funding to help those initiatives. However, even if you look at local food, that is something that is undergoing a revolution in Scotland at the moment. Again, it is being supported by the Scottish Government. We gave over £2 million between 2013 and 2016 to support many local initiatives across the country. Indeed, 140 initiatives have been supported through that kind of funding, ranging from community food initiatives to make sure that people can access food grown locally to food festivals and other food events that are taking place. They are very important in supporting the local food revolution that is taking place in Scotland. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for taking the intervention. You mentioned all those small community projects, and they are tremendous, and the aggregate effect can be very impressive. What part should planning policy play in food production? For instance, should the Government not be allowing good agricultural land to be used for building? I welcome the fact that many of the initiatives that were mentioned by members during the debate have been put forward and supported and originated from the Scottish Government. For instance, planning policy and allotments is an issue that came out of a meeting that I had with a Fife council official a few years ago when he was telling me the difficulties that he had in Fife of securing land for allotments. We have managed to now change the legislation in Scotland to deal with those issues, and planning policy is at the heart of that. There are two or three issues that I want to touch on briefly before I close, which other members have raised. First, food waste. One of the ironies is that people cannot afford or are able to access good quality food at a time when, as a society, we waste a lot of food. That is a crazy place to be, given the impact that it has on its pockets, for households and its budgets, as well as the fact that it is bad for the environment, and that it is just a simple waste of a very valuable resource. The 2012 regulations that we passed in this Parliament now mean that there are measures in place to stop food waste going to landfill. At the same time, we have now set Europe's most ambitious target as a Government to cut food waste from Scotland by a third from 2025, and we are taking a European wheat in terms of tackling food waste. At the same time, it is also a global issue. At a time when people talk about GM, which this Government does not support as the answer to feeding more mouths in the world as a way to produce more food, as a planet, the UN report that we waste around a third of the food that we produce in the world. About 28 per cent, if I remember the statistic correctly, of our agricultural land is used to grow food that is wasted to 28 per cent. Clearly, to tackle food poverty or malnutrition around the world, we have to tackle food waste in a global sense, as well as in a Scottish sense. Two quick points are tackling all those issues at a European level. I agree that the common agricultural policy needs reformed. Indeed, if it was up to me, we would rename it a European food policy in other dimensions. The final point that I want to make is that food education, which some members have mentioned, is also crucially important. It is not good enough that young people do not know where the food on their plate comes from, how it was grown, the impact that it has on the environment and, most importantly, the impact that it has on their health. Only last week, I announced about £870,000 of new money for food education initiatives in Scotland. I was at Holyrood high school here in Edinburgh doing that, and that cash over the next year will support many food education initiatives working with teachers, staff and pupils in many of our schools. Over 300,000 pupils have already benefited from Scottish Government food education money over the past few years. Food education is key to changing Scotland's food systems, our food culture and creating a good food nation in this country. Many thanks and thank you all for taking part in this important debate. I now suspend this meeting until 2.30.