Britain's Ticking Time Bomb: The Food Security Crisis

**Caroline Lucas** (0:06)
To cover up one high-level report into the impact of nature and climate collapse on the UK's national security looks odd. To cover up two starts to look like a pattern. Last week, we spoke about the first report that the government didn't want us to see, which was compiled by, no, not politicians, not environmentalists or even economists, but by top intelligence officials from MI5 and MI6, the people who warn the government about the biggest threats of conflict and instability facing the country. That report from the intelligence chiefs essentially told us that climate and nature collapse is a serious national security concern for the UK. At the heart of that hidden report, which was eventually published, albeit heavily truncated and redacted, is a stark warning about the UK's ability to feed its population.
It identified food supply as the UK's single greatest vulnerability in a world of climate and nature breakdown. Put plainly, without intervention, people of this country could go hungry. In this episode, we uncover a second hidden report, this time from 2024, commissioned from a now disbanded team at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to brief an incoming government on long-term risks. Yet, oddly, it wasn't included in official handover documents, and the only reason it's come to light at all is thanks to Ben Cook at the Times newspaper.
Now, its conclusion is equally stark. Climate change, habitat loss and geopolitical instability mean that the UK's food security is, and I quote, at risk of catastrophic failure. Not in some distant future, but potentially under some scenarios by the end of this decade. Now, that could mean empty shelves, rationing and the state losing its ability to guarantee food supply. And what's remarkable is that the warnings are coming from within the industry as well. Last year, a whistleblowing memo from senior food industry figures made headlines when they described the level of food security threat as, and I quote, like none we have seen before. In this episode, we'll ask why the UK is so vulnerable to food shocks. Why isn't the government coming clean with us that access to food might be compromised? And what can we do about it?
I'm really pleased to be joined by Paul Behrens, a British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford, and an expert in food system transformation. So welcome.
We now have two hugely important reports, both of which have been suppressed by the government. We've got the Joint Intelligence Report on Global Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Collapse, which is a bit of a mouthful. And we've now also got the DEFRA Critical Systems Report. And so I wanted to ask you, what on earth do you think the government is doing when it's trying to keep us from seeing the contents of these reports? Why aren't they leveling with us about the scale of the risks that we face?

**Paul Behrens** (3:11)
Thanks so much, Caroline. Yeah, I think these reports are both very worrying about the risks that we face.
They're very clear about what we're facing in terms of ecosystem collapse, in terms of impacts on the food system in the short term. We're uniquely exposed to some of these shocks as a high-income country. And so I think if you are going to start publishing these in full, then you're going to need to start bringing out some policies, because you're going to have to start reacting.
Some of the reports are quite clear that we need quite far-reaching and deep changes to our food system. And of course, that's a lot of efforts that might not align with the government's agenda. And it might mean that the government has to do a lot more communication to bring people on board. And that's just a huge effort. But I'd be interested in what you think, having been close to the policy making.

**Caroline Lucas** (4:02)
Well, I mean, I do think you're spot on. It really does feel as if the government's trying to save face here. I mean, so many of the policies they're pursuing, like slashing the international aid budget, for example, seems to be going in exactly the wrong direction when we're told that it's precisely the vulnerability of so many of the poorer countries that is not only causing their own populations great hardship, but also making the whole world more insecure as well. But I wanted to quickly zoom out and just look at the global picture a second, because it seems clear that the climate and ecosystem stability that has given us reliable harvests, by and large, in the past is now gone. We're talking about droughts, we're talking about floods, wildfires, heat extremes, and on top of that, scientists are now warning us of a super El Nino on its way, a naturally occurring event when waters in the Eastern Pacific surge in temperature.