UK must stockpile food in readiness for climate shocks or war, expert warns | Food security

The UK government should stockpile food, according to a leading food policy expert, because it is unprepared for climate shocks or wars that could lead to population starvation.

Professor Tim Lang of City St George’s, University of London, said the UK was producing far less food than it needed to feed itself and as a small island that relied on a few big companies to feed its giant population, it was particularly vulnerable to shocks.

The first UK food security report published in December 2021 found that the country was 54% self-sufficient in food. Other wealthy countries like the United States, France, and Australia are all food self-sufficient, meaning they produce enough food to feed their populations without importing as necessary.

The United Kingdom is one of the least food self-sufficient countries in Europe. The Netherlands, for example, which is densely populated, is at 80% and Spain at 75%.

“We’re not thinking about it enough. We’re dodging it,” Lang said in a speech at the National Farmers Union conference in Birmingham.

“The default position that others can feed us is rooted in the British state system, and indeed in the nature of how agri-food capitalism works in Britain. Others are wiser. Other countries stockpile,” he said. “Other countries have much more flexibility in their systems than we do. What we glorify as efficiency is now vulnerability.”

Other countries have emergency stocks in the event of war, food contamination or climatic shocks. Switzerland still has enough stock to feed its entire population for three months and increases it to one year. The UK government advises households to have three days’ worth of food in their cupboards.

The government has no plans to improve the UK’s self-sufficiency and will not set a target for food production. Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said: “I’m not going to give a percentage. I would like us to increase food production nationally, particularly in horticulture and poultry, where I think there are real opportunities for growth. But I’m not going to give you a number.”

Self-sufficiency is likely to decline; production of wheat, beef, poultry meat and vegetables has declined over the past year.

A small deficit in food supply could have dramatic consequences. Experts have recently warned that a shock could trigger social unrest and even food riots in the UK, as chronic problems have left the food system like a “tinderbox”.

Lang’s report for the National Preparedness Commission, published last year, revealed that the UK’s food system is extremely vulnerable to attack due to its concentration in a few large companies.

The study found that the UK’s 12,284 supermarkets are ‘powered’ by just 131 distribution centres.

This is an “easy target” for drone attacks or cyberattacks by malicious states, he said: “The big nine retailers account for 94.5% of all food retail. That’s nine companies, using just 131 distribution centers. In the drone war, it’s an easy target. »

According to its report, Tesco, which supplies almost a third of the UK’s food retail, operates through just 20 distribution centers. He said: “With four of the ten major retailers accounting for three-quarters of food retail, if one or two of these mega-companies were hit in some way, or if their tight system of distribution centers were disrupted, the impact on the public would be considerable. »

Lang’s report also said that UK civil defence, which involves preparing the population for shocks caused by war, received in 2021-22 the equivalent of 0.0026% of total defense spending. He added: “The reality is that there are no binding laws in the UK outlining the duties of central or local government to ensure people are fed. »

Brexit has also made the UK more vulnerable to shocks, by reducing the subsidies farmers receive to produce food and making it harder to import food from our largest trading partner.

In the three years starting in January 2021, agri-food imports from the EU fell on a three-year average by 8.71% per year, compared to the three-year period before Brexit, according to analysis by the University of Sussex.

As climate change makes it harder to grow fruit and vegetables in southern Europe and North Africa due to extreme weather, countries like the UK, which rely heavily on fresh produce imports, will suffer.

According to the UK Health Security Agency, if the UK continues to follow current trends in land use, climate and agri-food, “by 2050, 52% of pulses and 47% of fruit would be imported from climate-vulnerable countries and the supply of vegetables, fruit and pulses is expected to be less than would be needed to meet the UK’s dietary recommendations.”

This has already happened in 2023, when bad weather in Spain and North Africa caused shortages of salads and fresh vegetables across the UK. More than 80% of the UK’s fruit and more than half of its vegetables are imported.

Lang said: “Climate change, floods and droughts are among the vulnerabilities of the just-in-time logistics system of the food system. The main conclusion of my report is that we have created a food system in the name of efficiency, which is now inappropriate for where we are, with a concentration of large dominant companies, being the choke points. This creates a vulnerability. Drone warfare and reliance on software make it doubly vulnerable.”

The professor called on the government to legislate to ensure the food system is safer and more able to withstand shocks.

“I would like it to be a food security and resilience law, something that is clear about the fundamental purpose of food systems,” he said. The food system needs flexibility rather than being a simple, just-in-time system focused only on profits, he added. “The purpose of food systems is to feed people. How, what and under what circumstances, if you’re a big producer of raw materials, does it actually feed people? Will it survive shocks?”

Lang also said the UK needs to boost food security and produce more food domestically. “We need to increase our production here, not out of petty nationalism, but because we have good land, good people, good resources, good infrastructure. It is a poor use of land not to do that. We are not getting the leadership we need from central government,” he said.