Soaring costs put farmers on the front line of a food crisis

Check the prices on supermarket shelves and it’s easy to get the sense that all is not well with Britain’s food supply.

Between March 2022 and the same month this year, the price of food rose by 19.1 per cent, the fastest such increase since 1977.

At the same time, the sight of empty shelves has become more common, as happened in February, when poor harvests in Spain and Morocco led supermarkets to ration purchases of tomatoes, cucumbers and other fresh produce.

In its National Food Strategy, published in June last year, the government claimed that the country enjoyed a “high degree of food security” and a “diverse and resilient food supply”.

Yet conversations with farmers and food policy experts reveal a food system beset by challenges. Indeed, according to Tim Lang, Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University London, “the UK food system … is actually stretched, open to disruption and by no stretch of the imagination ‘resilient’.”

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