Is the uk food secure? Does it matter?
A Grand Challenge Lecture by Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy, City University of London.
Preparations for no-deal Brexit exposed how the UK food system is stretched. After bland reassurances that all was well, when the ‘Yellowhammer’ papers were leaked in autumn 2019 and finally released, they suggested considerable fragility in our current supply system. This lecture will explore the many paradoxes about the UK’s food. By many measures, it is unsustainable, contributes to massive health problems (many of which are paid for by the NHS), and is locked into an economic dynamic which squeezes primary producers. Yet it is the biggest employer (4 million jobs) and has brought the average household expenditure on food down from 30% in the 1950s to about 10% today. It produces so much food we waste a quarter. This lecture raises questions we now should ask. Can we unlock the ‘lock-ins’ which analysts now say characterises the supposed successes of UK food? Is there sufficient public pressure to do this? Who and what gains or loses? If we want to change such a finely-tuned and delicate system, how could we do this? Most importantly perhaps, it considers whether we can afford not to.