What’s worrying French supermarket bosses should be prompting British ministers to action. On Sunday, hackers forced up the temperatures of refrigerators in hundreds of food stores across France to as high as 50C, resulting in waste and fires. Beyond the immediate destruction and inconvenience, it raised the prospect of other malicious actors finding new ways to play havoc with the food chain.
Only weeks before, 150 experts together warned the British government that it does not have a plan to feed people in a crisis – and that the west is entering an era in which not only disruption but the weaponisation of food is a real possibility. “The public has been led to assume that food will simply be there,” they wrote. “It may not be.”
The Covid pandemic was a salutary reminder of how vulnerable modern systems are – a shock for consumers used to strawberries in October. Brexit, climate stress and the wars in Ukraine and Iran have underlined the risks and raised prices. One issue is overall supply in the UK, which imports about 40% of its food. But affordability, logistics, distribution and nutrition are also essential components of food security.
While food inflation has slowed, the cumulative impact has been severe. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit says that by September 2027, UK food prices are likely to be 50% higher than at the start of the cost of living crisis in mid-2021. That scale of increase previously took almost two decades. Food is a far smaller proportion of household budgets than it was 50 years ago. But the fifth of the population with the lowest incomes would need to spend 85% of their disposable income on food to meet governmental advice on healthy diets. Fruit and vegetables often give way to more filling but less nutritious options.
The government has encouraged households to stockpile several days’ worth of tinned goods and bottled water in case of an emergency. But outsourcing food security to individuals is a woefully inadequate response. Building civil food resilience will require more effort, including working with civil society.
Real improvement requires a structural shift away from the “leave it to Tesco” approach decried by Prof Tim Lang, a leading food-policy expert. As he points out, “framing markets is the job of politics”. Reliance on just-in-time last-minute deliveries and a few hubs makes economic sense for retailers, but is not conducive to national food security. Crises often winnow out smaller firms. But diversity is key to resilience. Geographical distribution – including relocalisation of food production – is also central. Almost 95% of retail food comes via 131 food-distribution centres. Disruption to just one supermarket chain’s infrastructure could have a mammoth impact.
Experts have rightly called for food supply shortages and disruption to be included as risks in their own right in the national security risk assessment. There is also a strong case for a dedicated national food council to focus on food security. The UK abandoned its strategic food stockpile in the 1990s. It should think again, as other countries around the world are doing.
Almost one in 10 households are already food-insecure. Others have become used to an age of abundance. None can count on food security without sustained action from the government, beginning with the recognition that this problem can’t be left to the market.
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