Our Food 1200 and the Future Generations Commissioner are to cohost a Senedd discussion on Tuesday 16 April on the topic of food shocks. Is Wales prepared to face an unstable global food system? Because it will. It already is.
This is the first in a series of national conversations on food security, which will bring together two key issues of our time: food poverty and the future of our farming. Further conversations about food shocks and preparedness will involve local governments, farmers, food poverty campaigners, food partnerships, and others.
National preparedness
At Tuesday’s meeting, food policy expert Professor Tim Lang will present findings from his major report on food security, commissioned by the UK’s National Preparedness Commission. Lang is Professor Emeritus of Food Policy at City University of London, and author of the authoritative analysis of the UK’s defective food system, Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them. He’s been engaged in academic and public research and debate on the direction of food policy, locally to globally, for many years.
Food shocks occur when harvests or livestock are lost due to creeping or sudden changes in climate and habitats – including extreme climate events like storms, drought, or flooding – and/or geopolitical crises, as with the war in Ukraine and its impact on grain supply. These of course cause problems like food shortages and price hikes. This year in Wales, high rainfall levels are having multiple impacts on farming.
Lang will explain that the UK, Wales included, is unprepared for future supply failures and spiralling food prices. These problems, which we are already experiencing, affect people on low incomes the most. They will worsen due to such factors as climate change, wars, and trade barriers. Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs, will respond to Lang, as will a cross-party panel of MSs.
Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner of Wales, will argue that these issues must be central to the new food strategy for Wales he has proposed, Cymru Can. His strategy addresses diet-related illness, sustainable land management, farmers’ livelihoods, and food insecurity for low income households. Future food shocks will exacerbate problems in all these areas.
Facing up to food shocks
Professor Lang will explain that a vital part of building food security is to diversify our sources of food, so we are less dependent on a highly centralised global wholesale and supermarket system. New, more local supply chains are needed, so that our cities are more substantially fed from the farms in their rural hinterlands. There needs to be a renaissance of fruit and vegetable farming providing the basics of our diet. These are big opportunities for Welsh farming.
He will also argue that preparations need to be made for emergencies, to reduce panic buying and ensure those on low incomes can continue to eat. Other countries are already taking action or preparing for such crises.
Canada and Germany are drafting comprehensive food plans that address resilience. France requires cities to have a plan to feed their populations from their rural hinterlands. Latvia and Sweden have total defence plans for emergencies, with information for all citizens. Sweden advises every household to have an emergency stock of food and water. And Lithuania and Switzerland have national food reserves and stockpiles.
We experienced panic buying and empty shelves across the UK during the Covid pandemic, preventing health and emergency workers in particular from accessing food. Food poverty is already escalating as war, climate overheating, and trade barriers drive up the price of food delivered through global food supply chains. 20% of people in Wales experienced a shortage of food in 2021–2022 (IPSOS and the Trussell Trust, Hunger in Wales, 2023).
So ever-rising food prices, shortages, and food poverty are already an issue for our nation. How do we protect the wellbeing of all in Wales regarding this most basic need?
Addressing food security
Our Food 1200 works in Powys, Bannau Brycheiniog, and Monmouthshire to build new, secure food supplies for the region and adjacent cities. At the programme’s core is building affordable small farms for new generations of fruit and vegetable farmers. We’re also developing a communications programme – in which Tuesday’s event plays a part – to work out with key stakeholders what Wales should do. This takes into account some of Professor Lang’s recommendations, including:
- National Government: develop national food resilience plan; support building of distributed/decentralised food system with new supply chains; support renaissance of fruit and vegetable farming for local/regional markets; enhance community access to land for new farmers; make rationing plans; build warning systems; engage with public about risks.
- Regional: build farming enterprises growing food for local and regional markets (acquiring land for young farmers, encouraging farm diversification, supporting changes in planning regulations, building new skills); build new farmer-owned supply chains to local, regional, and nearby urban markets; develop resilience infrastructure (food stocks, local processing, storage, public education).
- Communities: acquire land for local growing (allotments, community gardens, small farms); grow demand for local food among residents and schools; encourage a lower-carbon vegetable-rich diet; make good food accessible to low income households through community programmes; prepare for emergencies (community stockpiling, distribution systems, group catering); educate residents about food vulnerability and emergency supplies.
- Households: those that can afford it and have space should plan for emergencies, to reduce impacts of emergency panic buying.
Addressing food security unites interests across Wales, rural and urban, as demonstrated by the wide cross-sectoral interest in Tuesday’s meeting. Whatever is decided upon as a nation, strategies to prevent food shocks must address two big issues of our time: food poverty and the future of farming.
