Petition to Declare a Food Security Crisis in the UK
Farmers Movement Cornwall in association with the Seven Concerned Citizens ask you to support our campaign to declare a food security crisis in the UK!
The declaration will be used to request local authorities establish food system resilience committees which will be responsible for developing policy and implementing actions aimed at improving agricultural self sufficiency and the resilience of the food system in their local areas.
The establishment of food system resilience committees at county council level forms part of the wider policy review proposals laid out in our food security policy flowchart found here:
https://farmersmovementcornwall.co.uk/introduction-to-the-food-security-policy-flowchart/
Further information on our campaign and a recording of the citizen’s advisory assembly which voted unanimously to proceed with our actions can be found on the Seven Concerned Citizens website here:
We believe the following three pieces of evidence are sufficient to make the declaration that there is a food security crisis in the UK. They are as follows:
1. A decline in the financial viability of the agricultural sector combined with a policy bias towards environmental actions at the expense of core food production has resulted in falling agricultural self sufficiency with (as of 2021) only 54% of the food on our plate coming from domestic production, this has resulted in higher levels of 3rd party risk being introduced into our food system through increased import dependency. The decline in the financial viability of the agricultural sector is further evidenced by the three following pieces of data which all come from various DEFRA reports:
i. Production to consumption of native crops (crops which can be grown in the British climate) is now down to 73%. This was at 95% in 1985. Native crop production has therefore been falling at an average rate of 5.5%/decade for the last 4 decades. Source DEFRA UK Food Security Index 2024.
ii. Return on investment in the farming sector is on average 0.5%. Output prices are so low and input costs so high that very little money is being made. Every £1 million pounds worth of asset will only generate an annual return of £5k. Source DEFRA Balance Sheet Analysis 2022/2023 Nov 2th 2024.
iii. The percentage of agricultural holdings not making a profit has tripled in 3 years. In 2022 10% made a loss, in 2023 it increased to 17% and in 2024 it was reported at 30%. Source DEFRA Agriculture in the UK 2022 report, DEFRA Farm Business Income by Type of Farm in England 2022/2023 Nov 14th 2024.
2. Supermarket supply chains which currently service around 85% of UK grocery expenditure are often long, resource intensive, fragile and susceptible to disruption, are operated on a ‘just in time’ basis and by nature carry very little strategic food reserve potential. Supply shocks in recent times caused by the Ukraine conflict and Covid evidence the risks of such heavy dependence on a supply chain model designed for cost competitiveness above consideration of how effective it can be in a crisis scenario.
3. There is at present a very concerning lack of policy relating to the creation of strategic food reserves and to food shortage emergency preparedness planning in the UK for example the 2022 Government Resilience Framework contains no mention of food security:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-government-resilience-framework
and of the 89 risks mentioned in the 2023 National Risk Register only one is related to food (contamination, not scarcity or how the public can prepare or cope with it):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-risk-register-2023
Please sign this petition to help our voices be heard by policy makers, we must restore our agricultural self sufficiency and be more prepared for supply chain disruption or longer term shortages, food security is national security!
Thank you from all at Farmers Movement Cornwall