An urgent rethink of food policy is needed to safeguard the nation’s future food supplies, according to new research.
The newly published report entitled ‘Food Resilience in a Changing World’ – produced by London Economics and commissioned by Associated British Foods (ABF) – warns that growing pressures on the British food system are threatening its long-term resilience.
It includes calls for a new National Strategy for Food Resilience to 2050, bringing together food production, manufacturing, trade and supply chains under a new cross-government, long-term approach. This would set clear, measurable targets for resilience, affordability, nutrition and domestic production.
Figures quoted in the report help highlight the scope of the problem.
The UK’s £162bn agri-food industry supports approximately 4.1m jobs representing around 12% of the country’s workforce. Food and drink manufacturing alone contributes £39bn to the economy, making it Britain’s largest manufacturing sector. In particular, employment in food manufacturing is roughly twice as high in the most deprived urban areas as in the least deprived. Domestic production accounts for 60% of the food eaten in the UK.
However, manufacturers are being squeezed by high industrial energy and ingredients costs, much attributed to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, while climate change and environmental degradation are adding pressure. Should global warming increase average temperatures by 2°C, the share of high-quality farmland in England and Wales could fall from around 40% historically to just 10% by 2050, without adaptation, it adds.
The report concludes that food resilience shares a number of features of public goods, requiring greater government leadership to balance competing priorities around affordability, economic growth, health, the environment, and security of supply.
Among its suggestions to government are to:
- Establish a National Strategy for Food Resilience to 2050
- Introduce annual reporting and parliamentary scrutiny of progress against food resilience targets
- Tackle high industrial energy costs, such as through targeted relief for strategically important food manufacturing and processing
- Develop a dedicated food manufacturing sector plan, to unlock investment in innovation, automation and robotics
- Ensure trade agreements and tariff changes protect domestic manufacturing capacity, whilst diversifying international supply chains
- Create the conditions for long-term investment by assessing the impact of tax, business rates, planning, skills funding and regulation
- Ensure food businesses have the support required to invest in innovation to continue to drive productivity gains.
“Britain’s food manufacturing sector is a national success story that we should build on,” said ABF CEO George Weston, whose £19.6bn company produces a wide portfolio of food brands including Kingsmill and Hovis.
“The challenges facing our food system are growing and so food security can’t be taken for granted,” he added. “The response requires a more joined-up and urgent approach from policymakers. That means putting food manufacturing at the heart of reindustrialisation, tackling high industrial energy costs and ensuring trade policy supports domestic production.”
Included in the report were some points of specific interest to the baking industry.
For instance, it highlighted how the UK is 90% self-sufficient in wheat production (without distinguishing between wheat used for animal feed or human consumption). This figure might sound like a strong and resilient position, noted the report, but it still requires an adequate number of millers, yeast producers, and bakers to turn that into bread. A resilient system requires consideration across the whole food chain including primary and secondary food producers, and the wider distribution network, it added.
Food manufacturers were also found to citing thin margins and a lack of general access to the wider industrial energy support schemes for them having to pass on rising energy costs to consumers – there’s been an almost 40% increase in UK food prices since 2020. Baking, milling and sugar processing are particularly energy intensive, with UK electricity prices for medium and large industrial users found to be the highest among 27 EU member states in 2025.
Meanwhile, the UK food system has several potential weaknesses relating to its ‘just-in-time’ supply chain, which means minor disruptions can magnify and leave little redundancy to absorb shocks.
One example was calcium carbonate used in flour fortification, which is sourced from a single quarry in Avignon, France. Another was sunflower oil from the Ukraine, with supply affected by logistical disruptions in the Black Sea region.
Concentration of this kind is not unique to food, stated the report. Other essential sectors carry comparable chokepoints. Food is one of the sectors the government designates as Critical National Infrastructure, alongside energy, water and transport.
John Curnow, partner at London Economics, said their research for the report shows that resilience depends on both strong domestic production and international trade. “Government has a critical role to play in identifying vulnerabilities across the food system, addressing risks and ensuring that the right policies are in place to safeguard food supplies for the future,” he asserted.
The full report can be accessed for free here.
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