The Project

A research project led by Chatham House - UK Food Supply in the 21st Century: The New Dynamic

The project was given its public launch in 2007 following 18 months of evaluation. The research is focused on the future, examining the effects of global trends on the networks that supply two staples, wheat and dairy, to the UK market.

The Researchers

Full profile of the research team can be found here.

CARDIFF BUSINESS SCHOOL (Kate Bailey, David Simons, Alexandra Kiff): supply chain lean thinking/elimination of waste, supply chain design and sustainable development, performance measures, cross-supply chain collaboration, the use of information flows in business environments.

CENTRE FOR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS, ACCOUNTABILITY, SUSTAINABILITY AND
SOCIETY (CARDIFF UNIVERSITY, BRASS) (Professor Terry Marsden, Professor Robert Lee): analysis of business relationships to promote sustainability, accountability and social responsibility. The interaction between businesses and their social and physical environment. Accountability across the food supply chain.

CITY UNIVERSITY Centre for Food Policy (Professor Tim Lang): food policy analysis, human and environmental health issues as they relate to social justice and culture. 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY, Saïd Business School (Hardin Tibbs): scenario thinking to frame strategic concerns and global issues, the facilitation of debate, and analysis of the future effects of change and their strategic implications.

CHATHAM HOUSE: (Susan Ambler-Edwards, Project Leader) the link to expertise around the world on the analysis of international issues. Her areas of expertise include resilience of the civil infrastructure.

Share/Save

For the first time since the Second World War, the UK has a Council looking at Food Security, reports the Telegraph. At the recent Chatham House Conference on Food Security, Hilary Benn launched the Council of Food Policy Advisors while declaring:

With rising prices and increasing demand across the globe, we can’t take our food supply for granted. Our food supply needs to be reliable and resilient and able to withstand shocks and crises.

. . . the foods that can be produced in this country we are currently 74% self-sufficient – a higher proportion than in the 1930s or the 1950s . . .

Our food supplies must remain secure, and we must have a strong, thriving, environmentally sustainable farming industry in this country that continues to produce a significant proportion of our food.

He concludes with a worthy statement of intent:

The simple truth is that it is wrong in the 21st century that anyone should go to bed hungry at night.

And it is our job to make sure that it is in the 21st century that we make this poverty, and this hunger, history. 

Amen to that.

Share/Save

On the 6th & 7th of October Chatham House held a conference on Food Security in the 21st Century. In itself this suggests that there is a problem worth considering, and the list of presenters emphasises its importance: The Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for DEFRA; Prof. John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser; and Joseph Glauber, Chief Economist, US Department of Agriculture among others.

We didn’t have a ticket, but the reported outcomes are interesting reading. The Guardian has a copy of the draft report, to be released in November, and states:

The UK’s food system is unable to cope with rapid changes in supply driven by climate change, rising energy prices and population growth.

 That seems pretty clear, and it appears they are prepared to start to think the unthinkable - that the free market for food will not provide an answer for the whole population:

Consumers are likely to have to accept a shift from individual preferences to a system in which government and industry have to ensure the food that is sold reflects the wider needs of society.

They go on to discuss the rising pressures on UK food supply from developing world appetites, water supply and climate change issues, but even without these we face one overriding fact:

UK consumers use food at a rate that represents six times more land and sea than is available to them.

That seems to me to be the clearest indication yet that we have a problem. Lets get on with the solution.

Share/Save