As the UK establishes new food policies following Brexit, its assertive ‘Global Britain’ narrative needs to be accompanied by actions to promote post-COVID food systems that are equitable, sustainable and resilient.
With the governance of the UK food system now substantively decoupled from the EU, albeit with ongoing ‘teething problems’, the UK has considerable agency in determining the nature, resilience and sustainability of the food systems in which it participates: new primary legislation in the areas of agriculture, trade and environment is at various stages of being established, new trade partnerships are being negotiated and a new National Food Strategy for England is being developed. However, the UK has also reduced its agency over the EU food system, on which it is substantially dependent. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the relatively minor role that public sector mechanisms (maintaining emergency food inventories and diversifying reliance on trade and logistics chokepoints, for example) currently play in developing and governing resilience relative to competitive private sector actors, whose primarily profit-driven motivations have made useful, though partial and uneven, contributions to developing systemic resilience.
The ways in which the UK contributes to food system resilience globally will also be shaped by the recent merger of its diplomatic and development assistance ministries and the temporary, though indefinite, reduction in the official development budget announced in the November 2020 Spending Review.
In many respects, the COVID-19 pandemic has not had as severely negative impacts on food systems – in the UK or globally – as expected, but it has provided a tragically costly reminder about the ways in which low-probability hazards can cascade across borders through human, ecological and economic systems to cause untold levels of harm. Food systems – if not the food and nutrition outcomes for the more disadvantaged segments of society – have been affected relatively lightly this time but may not be so resilient in the face of future shocks with different characteristics or preconditions.
The nature, extent, and rapidity of pandemic responses globally, beyond food systems, have also invalidated arguments about the intractability of changing the status quo in response to existential threats, such as those posed by climate change and ecological collapse. Yet the cost of uncoordinated ex-post responses clearly underlines the necessity of mitigating risks and investing in resilience ex-ante.
For food systems, this requires harmonization across policy domains, across supply chains, across borders and throughout food environments to ensure resilience is built systemically to benefit the health and well-being of all stakeholders. While UK civil contingency planning was lacking in this regard, there is some evidence to suggest that measures taken to prepare for Brexit may have left the UK food system in a better position to respond to pandemic dislocations than it otherwise would have been. Nonetheless, UK food system governance and policy processes remain fragmented across government departments and devolved administrations. In responding to the recommendations of the independent National Food Strategy commission and in meeting the commitments established in the 25-year Environment Plan, a more coherent, whole-of-government approach will be imperative, with opportunities to learn lessons from the EU Green Deal’s Farm to Fork Strategy.
The UK will remain reliant on international food trade for security of supply – it is clear that, by trading off systemic shocks for idiosyncratic or localized ones, full self-sufficiency is not an appropriate risk mitigation strategy. Nonetheless, both Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to bring about reconfigurations in food supply chains into, and out of, the UK.
As the trading environment changes and new trade deals are struck, it is important to question the extent to which international trade is genuinely providing diversification and contributing to systemic resilience. Globally, although progress has been made on avoiding the imposition of unilateral export restrictions and improved transparency around logistics, production sources and stocks, further efforts are required, particularly around stock levels, to better understand aggregate risk exposure.
Presently, it is questionable to what extent the predominant just-in-time models of food trade (both international and domestic) provide effective risk buffers against acute shocks. They have very little redundancy, supply-chain control is concentrated, and, for some commodities, global supplies are geographically concentrated in only a few ‘breadbasket’ regions, meaning that concurrent events in just a couple of regions could cause significant food access and availability consequences. Without due regard to the production environments from which food is sourced, the cheap food paradigm will undermine the viability of UK producers, the long-term resilience of overseas food landscapes, and the benefits of the UK’s increased domestic focus on payments for ecosystem services.
At present, much of the UK’s food footprint and the associated negative environmental and social costs occur offshore. Changes to the UK food system should ensure that the UK reduces the negative impacts of both its offshore and domestic footprints. Rather than offshoring the UK’s food footprint, environmental and social costs and benefits need to be internalized and regulated. This will require an increased focus on developing long-term, stable relationships with trading partners, supporting them to develop more resilient and sustainable supply chains, building capacity to meet high-level sustainability standards, and accounting for the impact of trade deals on nutrition security. The Trade and Agricultural Commission (TAC), an independent advisory board established in 2020 to advise and inform the government’s trade policies, has recently had its term renewed and been put on a statutory footing, aiding parliamentary scrutiny of the implications of new trade deals on animal welfare, food production and environmental standards. However, there are already concerns about UK trade governance and oversight, with trade deals being struck that ignore the TAC’s recommendations – and indeed, being struck before the TAC has been properly resourced. One of the TAC’s recommendations is that the UK should champion the creation of a global standards framework for the environment and clear metrics for measuring environmental sustainability, while establishing a corresponding set of rigorous national standards.
On the multilateral stage, the UK had significant leadership potential in 2021. As G7 president, it played an important role in reinvigorating international diplomacy, and it has had a certain degree of success in galvanizing some ambitious agendas and plurilateral commitments as host of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November 2021. While these achievements and the negotiated text of the Glasgow Climate Pact offer some encouragement, the cumulative climate finance pledges and national emissions reduction targets still fall short, even if fully implemented, of achieving the level of climate support and emissions reductions that equity and science demand. For its own part, the UK still needs to ensure its commitments to progress are not undermined by the cuts to its official development assistance budget. While G7 and COP26 are not food-specific forums, they are crucial in shaping the nature of pandemic recovery plans and in ensuring these are coherent with ambitious actions to tackle climate change in the context of other Sustainable Development Goals.
Furthermore, the UN Food Systems Summit, the G20 summit, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) and the Nutrition for Growth Summit have all provided further opportunities in 2021 (extending into 2022 in the case of CBD COP15) to ensure food systems proactively support and benefit from these agendas, as was recommended by the HM Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta Review (2021) of the economics of biodiversity. Mobilizing climate finance, making progress on carbon border tax adjustment mechanisms, and progressing biodiversity targets and trade standards will all be crucial in developing resilient food systems. While a degree of progress and many positive words have emerged from some of these forums, these now need to be rapidly backed up by concrete actions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call to the reality and predictability of cascading risks. Ultimately, both domestically and internationally, the UK needs to be in the vanguard of supporting and enabling post-COVID UK and international food systems that prevent short-term food insecurity and that promote long-term nutrition, livelihood, and environmental security, considering the gamut of risks related to climate change, biodiversity loss and zoonoses.
