Climate Emergency is a co-signatory of a letter to the Prime Minister:
5 October 2026
Dear Prime Minister and First Secretary of State,
Request for your leadership to build national food resilience and security
For too long, the UK has been complacent about food as a national security matter, even as the urgency of the matter has become irrefutable. Government agencies, the National Audit Office, parliamentarians, industry insiders and researchers have all warned of impending shocks and a scale of destabilisation that could make business-as-usual nigh impossible (see Annex 1).
The UK (along with the West) is entering a new era in which food supplies will be disrupted, public expectations may not be met and food can be weaponised. The food system is exposed to shocks and threats from geopolitics, climate heating, ransomware, energy outages, software malfunction and disinformation. These shocks will fall upon a system that is highly wasteful, import-dependent, environmentally unsustainable, and driven by the pursuit of private profit rather than resilience, with millions of people unable to afford a decent, healthy diet. The ‘just-in-time’ model means little or no stock is held along the supply chain, and the UK has no national food storage, as stores were wound up in the 1990s. Instead, the Government’s Prepare website and recent ministerial comments have advised households to keep a store of food for emergencies lasting a few days, with scant attention paid to the form that store should take or the practicalities and affordability of such recommendations for many lower-income households. In the Government’s own 2026 survey, 29% of respondents said a lack of money had stopped them preparing further.
In this context, we welcome your Government’s continuation of the resilience work begun under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. HM Government has also rightly acknowledged, in the UK Food Security Report and its national security assessment on global ecosystems, the escalating environmental and geopolitical risks to UK food security. And yet the gap between HM Government’s current approach and what must happen next to secure the nation’s food security is stark.
At the same time, there is much that the UK can and should build on within its current food system: the creativity of farmers and growers; the improvement of British food availability and cultures since the mid-20th century; the awareness that food systems rely on natural ecosystems; the recognition that food is one of the UK’s largest employers; and much more.
But the hard truth is that the food system built over recent decades is not fit for today’s or tomorrow’s challenges. The UK’s home production is woefully inadequate in many different food types. More than half of our croppable land grows feed for livestock rather than produce for people. Indeed, as the above-mentioned national security assessment concludes, ‘The UK does not have enough land to feed its population and rear livestock: a wholesale change in consumer diets would be required.’ The public has been led to assume that food will simply be there. It may not be, unless the UK’s food system is transformed for the world of climate, ecosystem, and geopolitical volatility.
We therefore urge you to:
- Commission an audit of the current reliance on a few, very large food firms to assess the UK’s vulnerability to modern forms of disruption (such as ransomware, chokepoints, energy dependence and crop failure), as well as dependence on international upstream agricultural inputs needed for food security (such as fertilisers, vitamins for animal production and feed requirements).
- Establish a new system of local food resilience committees under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, with the aim of addressing food supply disruptions at the local level. The current Cabinet Office Post-Implementation Review provides an exceptional opportunity to integrate food resilience into the Act and its regulations. Once established, food resilience committees would enable local emergency responders and their partners to prevent food emergencies – and to respond to any that cannot be prevented (see Annex 2).
- Inject clarity into the national approach to food production, with a view to re-aligning it around nutritional needs, in line with the Eatwell Guide and the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee. Priorities include boosting UK production of legumes, vegetables, fruit and nuts. Reports suggest that the costs of unhealthy diets are on the order of £100 to almost £300 billion per year. Addressing our food environment would lower these costs, correct price signals, improve productivity and decrease the burden on ecosystems.
- Instruct the Cabinet Office to assess food supply disruption and food shortages as risks in their own right in the National Security Risk Assessment, and to publish that risk in the National Risk Register. Food supply contamination is the only food-specific risk in the 2026 Register, and disruption to food is cited exclusively as a knock-on consequence of other risks. Unless food shortages are recognised as a national risk, community risk registers, which draw on the National Risk Register in classifying local risks, will continue to be silent on food crises for local populations.
- Establish a new National Council of Food Security, Defence and Resilience as a partnership between Defra and the Ministry of Defence, with oversight from the Cabinet Office and with the participation of the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.
- Rename Defra as the Department for Environment and Food Security, to reflect the department’s vital role in national security.
- Place responsibility for food storage on national, regional, local and community storage schemes, not only on the public.
- Engage households and communities on food resilience, security and defence – going beyond the limited ‘top–down’ advice offered so far on Government websites.
- Put in place the policy and regulatory mechanisms to support decentralisation of the UK’s highly centralised food sector, as well as innovation in and regionalisation of food supply networks.
We are keenly aware that any attempts to accelerate public protection are likely to elicit political challenges. Yet feeding all people well in the coming era of shocks will not be easy, nor will the process of change be effortless. Your leadership, Prime Minister and First Secretary of State, is required to build the nation’s food resilience and national security. Food security must be championed, not ducked.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Tim Lang, Professor Emeritus of Food Policy, City St George’s, University of London; Lead Author, National Preparedness Commission ‘Just in Case’ report
Professor Paul Behrens, British Academy Global Professor, University of Oxford
Carina Millstone, Executive Director, Foodrise
Some media coverage:
Independent: https://nz.news.yahoo.com/uk-preparation-food-shortages-woefully-090249227.html
Mirror (AOL): https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/food-storage-uk-emergency-war-37729090.amp (https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/food-storage-uk-emergency-war-37729090.amp)
