Sourcing food from a diverse range of producer nations, as well as producing it domestically, can enhance a country’s food security and increase the resilience of the global system to small, localized disturbances: losses in one region can be compensated by surpluses in others. However, reliance on external sources does increase exposure to systemic shocks and global disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. A high degree of self-sufficiency does not necessarily enhance food or nutritional security, especially in a changing climate with an increasing incidence of extreme events. Self-sufficiency concentrates dependencies and increases exposure to geographically concentrated shocks, such as the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK. Another example would be the wet winter and dry spring that characterized the 2019/20 cropping season in the UK, resulting in sizeable losses in that season’s arable crop yields.
Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK food system was preparing for significant changes as a result of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the ending of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020. The Agriculture Act 2020 received royal assent and became law in November of that year, replacing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and paving the way for ‘a system based on paying public money for public goods’. The reforms contained in the Act were also intended to support the government’s 25-year Environment Plan – to be delivered primarily by means of the Environment Bill, which was going through the final legislative stages in November 2021 – and help realize its commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Although the Brexit process was in train long before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were considerable uncertainties throughout 2020 over the exact ramifications for trade. The final UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement was not signed until 30 December 2020, and many implementation challenges relating to the UK’s exit from the EU Customs Union and the attendant customs checks have continued to have considerable impacts into 2021, not least on the supply of perishable goods.
The Trade Act 2021, which achieved royal assent in April 2021, provides the new legislative framework for the UK to develop new trade partnerships. For countries with which the UK does not have direct trade agreements, tariffs are now applied in accordance with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Most Favoured Nation principle under the UK’s Integrated Tariff Schedule, active since January 2021. Under the new schedule, the number of products with zero import tariffs has almost doubled compared to the EU’s Common External Tariff to which UK imports were previously subject. However, import protections remain on many agricultural goods. The UK has also announced its intention to develop an emerging markets trade scheme to improve access to the UK market for producers in developing countries, although access is currently largely unchanged from the EU’s ‘Everything but Arms’ trade-for-development scheme.
These developments should be seen in the context of significant recent structural changes in the UK government, such as the amalgamation of the development and foreign ministries into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and the reduction (equivalent to 0.2 per cent of gross national income – GNI) in the official overseas development budget announced in the Spending Review 2020: the reduced allocation of 0.5 per cent of GNI was to apply from 2021, lasting until public finances are able to pass a series of post-COVID-19 fiscal tests.
In late 2021, with the COVID-19 pandemic having thrust the objectives and strategies underpinning the UK food system into even sharper focus, the UK government is preparing to publish its first National Food Strategy for England white paper in 75 years, in response to the recommendations of an independent National Food Strategy commission.
Food-bank dependence was estimated by different providers to have risen by 89 per cent and 175 per cent year-on-year in April 2020 – shortly after the UK coronavirus epidemic took hold – but had already been increasing for the past five years.
Although production, consumption and distributional dynamics within the UK are not the focus of this analysis, they have a significant bearing on food and nutrition security outcomes in the UK, with early evidence suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating existing food-system inequalities and vulnerabilities.
For example, food-bank dependence was estimated by different providers to have risen by 89 per cent and 175 per cent year-on-year in April 2020 – shortly after the UK coronavirus epidemic took hold – but had already been increasing for the past five years. In each three-month period throughout the crisis, the number of parcels distributed by food banks (of which there are over 2,300 in the UK) has continued to be significantly higher than in the equivalent period in the previous year. Overweight and obesity – which in adults are associated with neighbourhood deprivation – have been identified as a risk factor for severe COVID-19 infection. In the year to November 2020, 62.8 per cent of adults in England (rising to 67.5 per cent of black adults) were overweight or obese.
Analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies reveals that in 2019 some 71 per cent of food sector workers in the UK earned less than £10 per hour, despite being defined by the government as critical workers. In addition, wide gender disparities in relation to the time spent on unpaid care work – including food shopping and cooking – persisted throughout the UK’s first lockdown, between late March and late April 2020.
