This blogpost lists the global risks to UK food supplies — and that of course includes supplies into Birmingham.
It’s based on our 2019 report, unsurprisingly titled Global Risks to UK food supplies. It gives a useful context for the statement made at the beginning of the third blogpost in this series that we currently import 40% of our food. But that this food won’t be available in the future.
In the Global Risks report, we categorise the list into four interlinked categories of risk:
- Climate Change to include extreme weather conditions and water risk.
- Resource depletion to include, land use (there’s none left), top soils, soil nutrients, what wilderness is left (very little). We also put anti-microbial resistance (AMR) into this category. (Many people consider AMR as being only related to human health, but in relation to crops and livestock.)
- Population to include projected world population, projections by region (with estimates that, by 20250, 40% of all the world’s children will be in Africa), forcibly displaced people and migration.
- Geopolitics to include control of transport links, an arctic shipping route and the Belt and Road Initiative.
If you prefer your information via video, this supplements the Global Risks report: Strange New World:
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Previous blogposts in this National Food Strategy series are:
#3: The global competition for safe, nutritious food
A link to our submission is here. A list of all the blogposts in this series is here.