{"id":112528,"date":"2025-05-18T20:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T20:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/112528\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T20:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T20:02:09","slug":"uk-supermarket-crisis-as-britain-turns-to-other-countries-for-food-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/112528\/","title":{"rendered":"UK supermarket crisis as Britain turns to other countries for food | UK | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s supermarket<\/a> shelves have never been so reliant on imports from overseas<\/a>, it has been revealed. Official figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show the amount of food consumed in Britain that is grown in the country fell to 62% in 2023, the most recent year for which there is data.<\/p>\n

This compares with a peak of 78% back in 1984, showing an eroded British self-sufficiency that experts fear is making the country\u2019s food supply increasingly precarious.<\/p>\n

A report published this year by the National Preparedness Commission found that \u201ccivil food resilience\u201d, a concept meaning the public\u2019s awareness of the risks to food supplies, ability to reduce unnecessary risks and preparedness to act to ensure society is well fed in a crisis, was \u201cnot currently adequately seriously by the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n

It called for a \u201cnew coherent UK food policy\u201d, which would increase domestic production, and for food to be defined as \u201cCritical National Infrastructure\u201d by national authorities.<\/p>\n

Tim Lang, the report\u2019s author and professor emeritus of food policy at City, University of London told The Times<\/a>: \u201cThe public is in a complete fantasy world of just thinking Tesco will always deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe\u2019re not even self-sufficient in potatoes. We\u2019re importing them from Egypt, for God\u2019s sake, which is drought-stressed. Look at where we get so much of our veg: Murcia, in southeast Spain. It is water-stressed. It is bonkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lang\u2019s comments came as Marks & Spencer sold potatoes last month from Israel<\/a> and Egypt as a temporary measure while it waited for new British harvests to arrive.<\/p>\n

Tesco sells spring onions from Egypt and Senegal alongside chicken and sweetcorn sandwiches that contain foreign chicken.<\/p>\n

To add to the current state of affairs, the US-UK trade deal announced this month will allow America to export 13,000 tonnes of beef into Britain each year, an increase from the current 1,000 tonne amount.<\/p>\n

Lang argued Britain does not have a food policy which encourages farmers to grow crops for supermarket shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental problem we\u2019ve got in Britain with agriculture and food production is we don\u2019t incentivise farmers to grow food. They\u2019re growing for commodities,\u201d he told The Times.<\/p>\n

He fears for the next time a global trade crisis hits, or a blockage halts traffic in the Suez canal.<\/p>\n

The National Farmers\u2019 Union (NFU) has been warning Brits about the risks of the nation\u2019s food status for some time, with the body\u2019s president saying last year that the country remains at the mercy of global supply chains.<\/p>\n

The NFU claimed that if Britain only ate food produced by the \u201cnational larder\u201d from the beginning of 2024, supplies would have run empty on August 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s supermarket shelves have never been so reliant on imports from overseas, it has been revealed. Official figures…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1700,6800,7908,475,51014,2070,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-112528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-food-section","11":"tag-food-security","12":"tag-imports","13":"tag-self-sufficiency","14":"tag-supermarkets","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114530624894474240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}