In meeting the dietary needs of the 68.6m (and growing) population of the UK, a post-Johnson government needs to take into account the increasing risks to our food supplies.
A Government food strategy needs to take account of them, and understand what changes they can affect, what they can influence and where they have to resort to mitigation only.
We’ve summarised them in the infographic below:
Reading from right to left, Government policy makes a difference to the the issues in the first two categories, who gets access to the food system, and what the internal stresses are — about which more later.
Regarding the third category, the grave interconnected external threats of climate change, resource depletion & diversity loss, pestilence and population pressures, their responsibility is threefold:
- To influence global responses to forces outside immediate human control
- To contribute to reducing the causes of climate change and resource depletion
- To take measures to mitigate their effects on the food supply system, both within the UK and globally
