That’s got to be good news. Along with our food chain partners, the Food and Drink Federation has long been pressing ministers to make sustainable food production a top government priority in its own right.

We believe passionately that the UK needs a genuine long-term vision and strategy for farming and food production – one that is designed to ensure the nation’s food security against the combined effects of climate change, higher global demand and increasing pressure on finite resources.

Food manufacturers will need to be at the heart of any such strategy as we are the critical link in the food chain. Without a competitive UK food manufacturing base, UK farmers would lack a ready market (after all, manufacturers buy three quarters of what British farmers produce), consumers would be more dependent on imported supplies, and there would be less resilience across the food chain.

Any long-term vision for the food sector must also be underpinned by a political appreciation of the importance of processors to the overall UK economy. It’s an often-ignored fact that our sector is the UK’s biggest manufacturing industry, employing 440,000 people directly and indirectly accounting for a further 1.2million jobs in the food chain.

The UK food and drink industry is also a vital high-value manufacturing sector offering world-class capabilities in areas of production, logistics, sales, marketing and innovation – which combine to create annual gross value added of £20billion.

We are highly innovative – spending £300million on research and development and launching 8,000 new products every year. We export more than £9billion worth of products every year.

And all this economic activity is carried out by 7,000 enterprises – most of them small or mid-size companies – generating a combined turnover of £72.6billion.

Given our sector’s relative size and economic importance, we clearly recognise that the food and drink industry has a responsibility to respond to the many difficult issues facing society – not least in the debate about how we ensure UK citizens have access to food and drink products that are both nutritious and offer the lowest possible environmental impact.

But I would argue that our industry is already leading the way in these areas.

For example: our members are working under FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition to make a real difference to the environment by setting themselves stretching targets in areas such as carbon emissions, water efficiency and waste reduction. We are also helping to improve the health of the nation through our groundbreaking work to change the recipes of favourite British brands and introduce clearer nutrition-labelling on food packs.

To see how our members are making a real difference to society, why not visit our website, fdf.org.uk.

As you will glean from our website, FDF and its members can always be found at the heart of the key discussions about the future of food production in this country. So we are delighted to be sparking another strand of informed debate about the future of food by sponsoring this spiked initiative, which I am sure will provide a positive contribution to those important discussions.

Ross Warburton is president of the Food and Drink Federation.