Our food system is failing — and it’s about to get dramatically worse
I hope I’m wrong. But there’s no evidence to suggest I am.
Read Future System Shocks: A Committee on Food Security?
Should the UK have a Committee on Food Security, similar to the Committee on Climate Change?
Read Covid-19 commentary: Coming out of lockdown: An account of food supply system fragilities
Things could have been worse, much worse. Nonetheless, lockdowns across the world have exposed serious fragilities in the UK food supply system:
Read Covid-19 commentary: The food supply system into the second month of lockdown
Dairy farmers is serious financial trouble? Top quality truffles at a tenner a kilo? Where has all the flour gone?
Read National Food Strategy #9: Three scenarios and their risks to the supply chain
Look again at the simplified supply chain map in this blogpost, also replicated below, and imagine three scenarios:
Read National Food Strategy #3: The global competition for safe, nutritious food
Our horizon scanning project report, Back from the Future, published in January 2018, contained this stark warning: We currently import 40% of our food. But that this food won’t be available in the future. The “long-term” future we looked at...
Read A city is yours: “Only nine meals between mankind and anarchy?”
The Beast from the East last spring, and then the heat and drought of the summer damaged harvests. The media has talk of stockpiling food in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
Read House Lords EU Committee on Brexit: deal or no deal . . . the agri-food sector
The latest of the House of Lords EU Committee’s excellent reports is Brexit: deal or no deal. One of the case studies, the agri-food sector, is copied below. A warning: The prospect of no deal with regard to our food...
Read The UK’s food trade deficit . . . & Brexit
In 2014, Defra’s annual stats reported our food trade deficit was £26.8bn; the UK imported £39.6bn of agri-food products, and exported £12.8bn.
Read The impact of Brexit on our food system
Few are talking about the implications of Brexit on our food supplies — and on the whole food sector. Yet the whole food system would be subject to huge change, and not necessarily for the better.
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