While pandemic-related supply impacts have been relatively mild, there is little evidence that this is due to widespread effective or coordinated interventions. Questions persist about the resilience of UK food systems.
International food-related supply chains into, and out of, the UK fared reasonably well throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021, notwithstanding the acute interruptions to cross-Channel flows at the end of 2020 and the Brexit-related contraction in trade with the EU in the first quarter of 2021. Yet, despite nutrition concerns not being as severe as in many developing countries, there is little room for complacency, as the world contends with a second year of the pandemic and faces a potentially worsening food security outlook.
Interviews conducted for this research during 2020 with various stakeholders in UK food systems confirm the authors’ understanding that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating existing inequalities and vulnerabilities within the UK and is challenging nutrition security for many people who have suffered income shocks as the pandemic has progressed. This emblemizes the new terminology of a ‘K-shaped’ recovery, which many are using to describe the likely bifurcating nature of economic recoveries from the pandemic.
The prolonged closure of the UK hospitality sector removed the usual channel of around one-quarter of consumers’ food. In turn, it exposed the difficulties of switching out-of-home-oriented supply chains to meet increased in-home demand, and threatened the nutrition security of those in the sector that lost their jobs or were placed on long-term furlough.
Other structural changes in food access, such as increases in online ordering and the forced closure of traditional food markets, have made business survival more difficult for many smaller suppliers, and have also made it harder for some marginalized groups to maintain dietary quality. While lockdowns appear to have stimulated more community-based food networks and shorter supply chains, such as vegetable-box schemes, in most cases these have served higher-income communities who are able to afford the premiums.
Structural changes in food access, such as increases in online ordering and the forced closure of traditional food markets, have made business survival more difficult for many smaller suppliers, and have also made it harder for some marginalized groups to maintain dietary quality.
There is also evidence that, in some instances, maintaining continuity of supply is having adverse (as well as beneficial) impacts on producers. One UK retailer reported to the authors that pressures to meet increased demand had led to the rapid recruitment of new suppliers in developing countries – without proper due diligence of suppliers’ practices, and in the knowledge that employees did not have access to personal protective equipment. In this case, the COVID-19-driven demand shock resulted in compromised worker safety and upward pressure on local prices.
If exploitative practices undermine producers’ trust in UK buyers, then, in a sellers’ market, the UK may find access to preferred supplies more challenging. Given that global food supplies are tightening and that waves of COVID-19 infections may reverberate for months and years to come, especially in many developing countries where vaccination rates are likely to be low for some time, there is still the potential that supply issues will emerge and that global food production could be adversely impacted by uncertain harvests in both the near and medium term.
By mid-2021, concerns were rising that a loss of up to 100,000 lorry drivers from the UK (due to the restrictions on movement imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the circumstances of the Brexit process, since many of these workers were from Eastern Europe) could lead to further temporary food shortages, analogous to a series of ‘rolling power cuts’, preventing both UK and imported fresh produce reaching shelves before it expired. Similar labour shortages were also becoming increasingly evident throughout the supply chain, including in packaging, production facilities and warehouses. There were particular concerns that the coexistence of the labour shortage and the end of the ‘grace period’ for post-Brexit food import checks – in October, having already been unilaterally extended by the UK for six months – could result in empty shelves. In response, the UK government first announced in September that the checks at the Irish border would remain suspended indefinitely; then, at the end of October, it implemented a legislative extension of road haulage cabotage, allowing foreign lorry drivers to make an unlimited number of deliveries while in Great Britain over a period of 14 days, up from the previous limit of two journeys within seven days of entry. The extension was to apply until the end of April 2022 in order to alleviate pressures in supply chains which, it was feared, might become particularly acute over the Christmas period.
As elsewhere in the world, responses to COVID-19-related impacts on food systems within the UK have not been particularly well planned. To a large extent, private sector actors filled the gaps where state-based civil protection planning was found lacking.
The Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004, for which the Cabinet Office is responsible, is the main piece of legislation for dealing with civil emergencies in the UK. It gives additional powers to ministers to make emergency regulations in a crisis and places a series of duties on local bodies to assess risks and to maintain plans for dealing with potential emergencies.
However, it has not been used as part of the UK government’s COVID-19 response, with ministers instead favouring bespoke legislation and arguing that the onset of the pandemic was not sufficiently fast for the CCA to be utilized. Beyond the legislation itself not being deployed, some have argued that the lessons learnt from previous crises leading to the CCA’s enactment have not been heeded. Given that future shocks are inevitable, there are certainly lessons that need to be learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic, and adaptations that need to be implemented. In an open letter to the prime minister, three eminent food security professors argued that the government should have been far more proactive in the early days of the pandemic in advising consumers ‘whether or when to stock up with food supplies, and which foods to choose to protect health’. They cautioned that food policy cannot be left to the food industry, given the concentration of supply and the systemic risks inherent in just-in-time logistics, arguing instead that a policy of ‘decentralisation and diversity would be more appropriate for food resilience’. They also called for a review of food defence planning, focusing on the needs of civil society and consumers in relation to food supply resilience and crisis preparedness and giving ‘due attention to the role and responsibilities not just of central government but also of the devolved administrations, regions, cities and community levels’.
Many approaches to agriculture are increasing longer-term systemic risks to food systems, including from zoonoses as a result of habitat pressures, land conversions and intensive animal production. The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call to the reality of such risks.
