Waiting for crisis
Outside of specialist policy and academic circles, food security rarely captures public or political attention until a shock brings it into sharp focus. When that happens, the response is often reactive and narrowly defined: ensuring there is enough food to prevent hunger. For a high-income country like the UK, that is an extraordinarily low bar. More importantly, it is an approach that fundamentally misunderstands both the nature of food security and the scale of the risks we now face.
There are two major flaws in this crisis-driven mindset. First, it prioritises quantity over quality, aiming to deliver enough calories rather than enough of the right food to support human health. Second, it waits for imminent danger before acting. As a result, slower-moving but equally profound threats - such as climate change and nature loss - never rise high enough up the priority list to justify meaningful intervention. By the time they do, we are already beyond critical tipping points.
That moment has now arrived. The Global Biodiversity Report ranks the risks of reduced crop yields, declining arable land, fisheries collapse and widespread crop failure as high. It also identifies a moderate risk that the UK could be unable to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse fuels geopolitical competition for food. This is not a future problem; it is a present reality, with the blockage of fertiliser exports flowing through the Strait of Hormuz making plainly clear our vulnerability to fossil-fuel dependent food systems.
Focusing on economic growth alone will not shield us in a more volatile, protectionist food system where food-exporting nations increasingly prioritise domestic needs. Behaviour change campaigns and voluntary initiatives are no longer sufficient. We need a fundamental shift in how and what food we produce and eat, and we need policy to ensure it happens quickly and with equity at its core.
Since the Second World War, food production has increased at an unprecedented rate, which is often taken as evidence of food security. In the short term, efficiencies in intensive agriculture have boosted availability. In the long term, however, these same practices have contributed to deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate change, all of which undermine our ability to produce food at all, as we see in the drought driven crop losses of 2025. This is why we must move beyond a narrow focus on food security and instead prioritise nutrition security: ensuring the availability of the right food for people and planet. Nutrition security allows us to assess the food system holistically, accounting for the trade-offs and synergies between human health, environmental sustainability and resilience.
Consider food diversity. Although more than 5,000 plant species are edible, 75% of global calorie intake comes from just 12 crops and 5 animal species. This lack of diversity damages ecosystems limits the nutritional variety of widely available foods, and leaves food supplies dangerously exposed to disruption. When production is concentrated around so few commodities, only a handful of stressors are needed to trigger significant shortages.
A focus on nutrition
It is tempting to assume that domestic policy has limited influence over these global dynamics, but that thinking is flawed. As an island nation, the UK is deeply embedded in global supply chains. Measures such as self-sufficiency ratios tell us little about real resilience. Trade is essential for nutrition security, providing both dietary diversity and protection against localised shocks. Moreover, even a fully self-sufficient UK would remain vulnerable to climate impacts driven by our own and other countries’ emissions.
As such, we must also confront the UK’s international footprint through strong due diligence policy and working towards core environmental standards for our food imports. Our reliance on lower standard imports and deforestation- and conversion-risk commodities to support livestock feed and UPF’s undermines our domestic farmers, while exposing us to climate-driven supply shocks and inflation.
Finally, what we grow at home matters. Land is finite, and if our Land Use Framework bites anywhere it should be in driving the alignment of nutrition, climate and nature goals, learning lessons from practical experience of implementing approaches that address this triple challenge, such as WWF's wholescape programme. Diversifying production, farming regeneratively, and increasing the domestic supply of nutritionally important foods are essential steps toward resilience.
The Food Strategy and Farming Roadmap should embed this definition and importance of nutrition security into our food policy. And with three years of this Parliament remaining, this provides an ideal opportunity for the Prime Minister to personally grasp this challenge and offer a bold proposition for the UK which has our long-term food, nutrition and national security in mind.
The choice before us is clear: continue treating food security as a short-term crisis, or act now to build a nutrition-secure food system that can withstand the shocks ahead. Policymakers, businesses and civil society must push for bold, joined-up action - because waiting is no longer an option.
