If disaster strikes, will there be enough to eat? Britain should be prepared – but it isn’t | Tim Lang

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“Keep calm and carry on.” We all know that famous second world war poster, don’t we? But it’s illusory: the poster was never publicly displayed during the war and only discovered by chance decades later.

Illusions bedevil our readiness to cope with the crises we might face. Reviewing the state of UK civil food resilience for a National Preparedness Commission report, I found that there is, in fact, scant preparedness going on, and little attention given to involving the public.

The official government resilience framework has three sound principles: first, take a “whole of society” approach; second, prevention is better than the cure; and third, build a shared understanding of the risks. But what does this mean in practice? Not nearly enough. I found the further away from Whitehall I looked, the less people were being engaged.

On the morning of 22 May last year, hours before the general election was called, the Conservative MP Oliver Dowden, then deputy prime minister, told a defence industries conference that he wanted everyone in the UK to store three days’ worth of food and water.

But this is scarcely realistic. For individuals juggling competing financial demands, food is the flexible item in their budget. Fixed costs come first. There are other problems too. The Food Foundation’s 2025 Broken Plate report states: “Healthier foods are more than twice as expensive per calorie than less healthy foods and less available. The most deprived fifth of the population would need to spend 45% of their disposable income on food to afford the government-recommended healthy diet – rising to 70% for households with children.” So with rampant diet and health gaps caused by income inequalities, any notion of a “whole of society” solution evaporates.

The national risk register, the UK’s official list of 89 risks facing us, barely acknowledges food. It points to just one risk: food supply contamination, and that’s on page 122 in the 2025 document. Yet almost all the expert opinion I canvassed predicted enormous short- and long-term food security challenges ahead. Think energy outages, ransomware attacks, AI/bot attacks, internet failure, chokepoints and trade disruption. Think geopolitical downturn, the spread of war and overt conflicts, and disinformation-led public panics. In addition, there are all the impacts of climate heating: biodiversity loss, too much or too little water, and soil erosion.

It may salve the consciences of central government planners to put emergency preparedness advice on to a website, but it is clearly not enough. Two countries I examined, Latvia and Sweden, have developed practical advice. Last year Sweden produced a major reorientation of its food policy and intends to build more diversity into its food system, including creating dispersed national food stores. Sweden is also passing new legislation making it a responsibility of mayors to ensure that all are fed in a crisis. Storage has been central to crisis preparedness throughout human history, but in the modern world only Switzerland retains a national food store.

So what should we do? My report argues that public protection depends on action at national, regional, community and household levels. Just telling the public to store food is ridiculous. As interviewees told me, it’s a fantasy to think that everyone can look after themselves. Resilience isn’t a bolt-on feature. It emerges from how the food system operates, how we relate with each other.

For more than half a century, food companies have pursued lean efficiency. The only storage, as the logistics industry told me, is what’s on the motorway in delivery lorries. “Just in time” management hates storage. That’s why I propose that we switch to a “just in case” approach.

This needs community action, not just top-down advice. Already there are UK communities, towns and some cities that see the need for this. In Yorkshire, the FixOurFood coalition of communities, suppliers and academics has created a network of advice and knowledge about who can do what now. In Flintshire and Edinburgh community gardeners have trialled alternatives to our dependency on the big retailers. Building community solidarity is a process.

Latvians I spoke to said: “We tell our people that if Russia invades, government will collapse.” This advice is given not to scare people but to focus the public’s attention so people know how to help themselves and each other if shocks do come. Every household has a pack of cards containing this information.

Rule number one in resilience planning is to try to prevent crises in the first place via a sustainable food system. But rule number two is to help build capacities to bounce back after shocks hit. Things won’t be the same. A country that expects food to be on shelves 364 days a year (Christmas Day excepted) just isn’t prepared for shocks. The Fair Food Futures Project has been asking communities in Bradford and London’s Tower Hamlets to assess what emergency food systems they have by mapping “community food assets”. I think this is essential. Your local cafe or pub might be where simple meals can be cooked after a shock.

At a restricted official meeting I attended last year, we were all asked how many of us had a “grab bag” – a carrier you can sling over your shoulder to escape when danger strikes, with essentials such as passport, bank details, phone, charger, keys, glasses, medication, child essentials, cash, contact details and food. We were also asked how many of us kept a store for emergencies. Most kept the bag; fewer had an emergency store of food.

But then it’s easier to prepare a grab bag than it is to lay down heavy and costly stores of food, much less water, which is what you most need in the short term. The Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection reminds its citizens that they can go without food for 30 days but without water for only three. The truth is that we UK citizens live in a fantasy world – a legacy of the British empire – that someone far away will always feed us. At the same time, business knows that there are shocks ahead too big for even them to handle. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says 2025 is the year it addresses food security and resilience. It must. Only the government can provide the direction that is sorely needed. The public must hold it to account, hopefully before calamity strikes.