The UK needs government-led structural food resilience rather than reliance on markets and individual stockpiling
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/editorial. "The Guardian view on food security: we have just-in-time, we need just-in-case | Editorial | The Guardian." October 15, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The Guardian argues that Britain's food supply is efficient but fragile, relying on a few big distribution hubs and last-minute deliveries. With cyber-attacks, wars and rising prices adding risk, it says leaving food security to supermarkets or telling families to stockpile tins isn't enough, and the government needs to plan and build backup capacity.
Conclusion
The UK government must take sustained, structural action to build national food security, including a shift away from market-led just-in-time supply, because the problem cannot be left to the market or to individuals.
Premises
- The UK food system faces growing and varied threats, including cyber-attacks like the French refrigerator hacking, the possible weaponisation of food, climate stress, wars, Brexit and pandemics, and experts warn the government has no plan to feed people in a crisis.
- The UK is structurally exposed: it imports about 40% of its food, relies on just-in-time deliveries, and routes almost 95% of retail food through 131 distribution centres, so disruption to one chain's infrastructure could have a huge impact.
- Market incentives favour efficient just-in-time logistics and consolidation, which suit retailers but undermine national resilience, since resilience depends on diversity and geographical distribution.
- Food security is already weak: prices are expected to be 50% higher by September 2027 than in mid-2021, almost one in 10 households are food-insecure, and the poorest fifth would need to spend 85% of disposable income to follow healthy-diet advice.
- The government's current approach of encouraging households to stockpile tinned goods and water outsources responsibility to individuals and is woefully inadequate for a systemic problem.
- Other countries are rebuilding strategic food stockpiles and the UK abandoned its own in the 1990s, so there are workable policy options such as a national food council, food-supply risks in the national security risk assessment, relocalisation and a strategic stockpile.
Assumptions
- Markets left to themselves will not provide adequate resilience, because retailers do not bear the full costs of national-level systemic risk.
- Government intervention (stockpiles, councils, risk assessments, support for relocalisation) can improve resilience at an acceptable cost.
- The threats cited (cyber-attacks, geopolitical disruption, climate stress) are likely enough to justify the cost of redundancy.
- Diversity of firms and geographic distribution of production genuinely increase resilience.
- Affordability and nutrition are legitimately part of food security, not just physical supply.
- The French incident and the experts' warning are representative of real, rising risk to the UK.