Future of Food: Feeding the nation through uncertainty

Matthew Stoughton-Harris our Head of Resilience discusses with Tim Lang, Emeritus Professor at City University, UK preparedness, the Middle East crisis and what is influencing our nation's approach. Watch, listen or read the transcript below to understand more about what resilience means for your business and how the UK can take action to  be better prepared.

0:00 Welcome and context from the IGD resilience team. Kirsty Saddler and Matthew Stoughton -Harris introduce the new Future of Food podcast series, which will cover economics, resilience, sustainability, health and workforce. Matt reflects on Tim Lang's landmark Just in Case report for the National Preparedness Commission and his distinctive focus on feeding households, not just supply chains. 

0:40 Introducing Tim Lang and framing the conversation. Tim Lang, emeritus professor at City University, author of Feeding Britain, is introduced. The discussion is framed around what food system resilience means for the UK today, set against a backdrop of Covid, the war in Ukraine, and ongoing Middle East conflict. 

1:00 Defining resilience and why the UK is falling short. Lang notes that resilience means different things across disciplines but anchors the discussion in the government's own framework: prevention, a shared understanding of risk, and a whole-of-society approach. His research found a stark gap between what a rich country, like the UK should expect and the reality of preparedness, especially on food. 

2:19 Post-crisis complacency, why haven't we learned the lessons? Despite Ukraine and Covid exposing critical vulnerabilities, Lang found a sense of having "muddled through" inside government. He uncovered near-incredulity among senior interviewees about the lack of engagement and how no systemic lessons were drawn from previous experience. Food barely registers in official resilience thinking, including in the Cobra system. 

4:05 Why food doesn't register as a strategic priority. Lang traces the UK's complacency to a deep-rooted historical worldview: the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 set Britain on a path of food import dependency backed by a naval powerbase. That culture persisted through the post-war period and is now embedded in Whitehall and consumer expectations alike. The retail or manufacturing sector cannot be expected to resolve fertiliser crises or climate change alone. 

8:03 The UK as an outlier, where is the debate on food security? Matt observes that other nations, including France and Sweden, treat food as part of strategic defence. Mark Carney's Davos remarks about nations that cannot feed or fuel themselves are cited. Lang questions why food has not received the same policy urgency as fuel or defence in the context of the current Middle East conflict. 

8:59 British exceptionalism and the case for diversification. Lang argues that the UK's highly concentrated distribution system, through which 94.5% of retail food flows. is acutely vulnerable in an era of hybrid warfare and drone attack. He proposes adding a fourth principle to the national resilience framework: diversity. Variety in supply chains, sourcing and storage is as important as any single intervention. 

14:45 What is realistically achievable in five years? Lang calls for a new Food Resilience and Security Act to take food planning out of short political cycles. He proposes a Food Council modelled on the Climate Change Committee, devolved powers to metro mayors to build regional food diversity, and much deeper public engagement, including practical advice on household and community-level preparedness. 

18:36 Lessons from France, bioregionalism and reconnecting the urban and rural. France's Programme National pour l'Alimentation, established in 2010–11, is held up as a model. Legislation requiring large retailers to stock locally grown produce has evolved into resilience planning by accident, rebuilding connections between cities and their rural hinterlands. Lang argues England has done the opposite, environmental priorities have displaced food from land use thinking. 

21:23 Navigating trade-offs, environment, health, production and affordability. The conversation turns to the inevitable trade-offs facing policymakers, businesses and households. Lang's view is that trade-offs are a process, not a barrier, they should be embedded in resilience thinking, not used to delay it. The Swedish model, which places a legal duty on mayors to ensure their populations are fed in a crisis, is presented as a mechanism for working through trade-offs at the appropriate level. 

25:24 Climate risk as a compounding threat. IGD's analysis, showing a 15% cost uplift on core UK diet commodities under a business-as-usual climate scenario, opens a discussion on how climate intersects with conflict, cybersecurity and food system vulnerability. Lang argues climate change is already present, not a future risk, and that the current Middle East conflict is itself partly a battle over fossil fuel control. The impact of the Co-op ransomware incident on the Orkney Isles is cited as a vivid local illustration of systemic exposure. 

29:39 What businesses can and should do. Lang acknowledges pockets of genuine leadership among larger firms, but warns that resilience thinking is not yet embedded across the sector. He challenges the tendency to treat preparedness as a competitive advantage rather than a shared public responsibility, and calls on IGD members to use their collective influence to press government for a binding national framework. 

33:01 The just-in-time lock-in and how to break it. The efficiency model that has defined food distribution for 35 years has stripped out storage, flexibility and diversity. Lang argues this requires a fundamentally new model — one where the industry thinks collectively rather than competitively. Business pressures are real, he acknowledges, but they cannot be an excuse for ignoring systemic risk that no single firm can manage alone. 

36:31 Resilience and sustainability as two sides of the same coin. Lang makes the case that sustainability investment and resilience planning are mutually reinforcing, a company that is more sustainable is better placed in a crisis. He calls for a multi-level approach: central government sets the framework, but regions, communities and individual businesses all have a role, with space for local creativity and adaptation. 

40:19 The cost question, who pays and how? Lang pushes back on the assumption that resilience adds cost. The food system turns over roughly £180–200bn annually, but much of the true cost, on the NHS, on the environment, on public health, is currently externalised. Shortening supply chains, with primary growers receiving a fairer return, can cut intermediary costs. The question is not whether we can afford resilience, but whether we can afford the status quo. 

44:50 The immediate crisis, fertiliser, the Strait of Hormuz and the next six months. With the Strait of Hormuz closed at the time of recording, Lang warns that fertiliser reordering for the next growing season is an acute short-term concern. The government has limited options: subsidise higher prices or accelerate the shift to lower-input, regenerative farming systems. Medium-term, he argues the UK needs a serious commitment to getting off the NPK fertiliser treadmill, with significant implications for cereal and livestock production. 

47:13 A message to CEOs, engage, escalate and act. Lang reports that senior food industry leaders privately agree the resilience gap is real but feel they lack the "mood music" from government to act at scale. He urges them to use their influence to press for a legislative framework, warning that the current void risks being filled by panic, disinformation and false scares, the hallmarks of hybrid threats. 

48:39 Closing reflections. IGD thanks Tim Lang and directs viewers to freely available resilience research on the IGD website. The conversation is framed as the first in a broader podcast series exploring the future of the UK food system, with further episodes to follow.