| The UK food and farming sectors are part of a global food system that, over the next years and decades, is likely to suffer existential instability and crises. Already, at a global scale, 10% of people – and rising – are facing chronic hunger. The factors driving this are partly wearily well-rehearsed failures in the food system itself; but these also now interact with and are amplified by escalating and overlapping stresses and flashpoints in our geopolitical, climate, biophysical, trade, and finance systems. It becomes increasingly tenuous to assume that the factors driving insecurity in other parts of the world won’t in the future destabilise the UK’s food and farming sectors.
The future could be grim. And we can’t assume we will be able to control or even influence the ‘incoming’ chronic stresses and acute crises that will face us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take action; to get ahead of the crisis, and to build resilience. To avoid the inevitable. Real leadership and long-term thinking will be required if we are to navigate these challenges. If we were to gather a ‘war-room’ to do this, what would they need to know about the risks and vulnerabilities of our food and farming sectors? What are the practical and structural features of those sectors that would need to change? Where are the power bases inside and outside the food and farming sectors that have the agency to make this happen? How can they be helped to act coherently, and with direction? |
