UK food security: what will it take…?

Broken records are hard to repair and replay – while being a broken record is painful and frustrating. Alas, regarding the security of the UK food system –fundamentally the robustness of the country to appropriately and adequately feed itself – ‘broken record’ is an aptly worrying term. Sadly, among others that are more qualified than me, I am the broken record warning of not just the perils of a more fragile food system, which should be self-evident, but also lamenting the missed opportunity for the UK economy of not harnessing the potential of the country’s largest industrial system.  

It would be convenient indeed if the food system and wider society could evolve a more robust industry that progressively feeds the nation from home-grown supplies, sustains capital formation and labour utilisation, while advancing on important issues, nay challenges, around matters such as animal welfare, biodiversity, carbon outputs and sequestration, nutritional composition, soil and water quality. Such a vision could be described as idealistic Utopianism – something that may appear more likely to emerge from the Green Party, given its observed contradictions. However, this need not  be the case if the UK Government and its devolved administrations embraced the reality of the challenges and seized the opportunities that a well-invested, progressive and supported British food system can face into and solve. 

 No coherent national strategy

Few folk outside Whitehall who are involved in the UK food system believe that the UK Government has an appropriate and acceptable take on a proper national food strategy; ie, a framework for facing into the delivery of much higher domestic food production, so self-sufficiency, while meeting the wider societal requirements of a modern state. There exists a broad church of views ranging from those favouring an elevation of far more local and organic production models through to those that believe that feeding c70m+ people cost effectively necessitates a degree of large-scale industrial capability – and all in between. Despite these variances, I believe this church has more in common than not. One consistent view however – and agreed by all – is that from Number 10 down, there is dis-interest, ambivalence, a disconnect and disrespect for the domestic food system that is ignorant, ill-advised and increasingly dangerous.  

 A dangerous policy vacuum

Precisely where this attitude emanates from is hard to discern. Is it because the UK is such a highly urban and post-industrial state, where the rural constituency of the food system in particular is disadvantaged, or is it because trade associations and wider lobbying organisations are too fragmented, too divided, and so inconvenient for politicians and administrators to efficiently and effectively work alongside? Whatever the reasons, the industry and its wider ecosystem know that there is something wrong. There is a vulnerability around low levels of food self-sufficiency (sub-45 percent in Great Britain, sub-60 percent for the wider UK) that in a de-globalising world is more a vice than a virtue. 

However, the powers that be remain largely blind to these realities, despite a plethora of warnings signals largely spoken with forked tongue when the subject arises. It is unfathomable that government in its broadest extent, from the Department of Health through to the Ministry of Defence, is not asking the Cabinet whether we should be concerned about our food security position. I have omitted DEFRA from this point because, up to the present day, one senses that its senior civil servants would struggle to spell the word ‘food’ if asked without warning, never mind ask questions of national food security – though maybe Ms Eagle and Ms Reynolds represent politicians that wise up the dimness that surrounds them. 

To be clear, those warnings signals are growing in number and magnitude, hence I am flabbergasted as to Whitehall’s inactivity, which is bordering on incompetence. Within the past decade the UK food system has been subject to the quite seismic shift that resulted from the EU–UK Referendum of 2016, for which the political class of the UK has singularly failed society at every level; a political adjustment augmented by the global Coronavirus pandemic; Russia’s heinous invasion of Ukraine; the US imposing tariffs upon external trade partners that has wiped out the British bioethanol trade; and now a war centred on Iran, where global hydrocarbon supplies are being challenged. Among all this, there is the greater variability of weather patterns – whether caused by a warming earth or not – which does not make farming any easier. What further signals do the powers that be in Westminster, in particular, need to enact a proper national food policy that embraces a more progressive and robust system that structurally builds national security over time?  

 Time for leadership at the highest level

The time was yesterday for the UK Government to tackle the issue, the opportunity, of how we produce a lot more of our own food in ways that are aligned with the challenges, the values and the priorities of British society in an ever more challenging, volatile and uncertain world. The food ecosystem must keep knocking on the door of 10 Downing Street to demand a responsible approach, and the Prime Minister must accept that DEFRA is not the body to answer such an important question. As a starting point, I return to the need for a Cabinet Minister for the UK Food System that embraces a multi-generational and multi-departmental – ie, difficult – journey to make the UK food system fulfil its potential on so many fronts. In so doing, it could unlock the potential of the largest, and one of the finest, industrial systems in the land.