SLEEPWALKING INTO A FOOD CRISIS
The Grimond Lecture
An Orkney Climate COP
In May of this year a group of food industry experts warned that the UK is facing a food crisis – from climate, inflation and international conflict risks. They called for urgent action to prepare for supply chain shocks and greatly expand food production, to reduce the UK’s massive dependence on imports. Among them is Prof. Tim Lang.
“We created a food system in the name of efficiency, which is now inappropriate for where we are, a concentration of big companies dominating, being the choke points. This creates vulnerability. Drone warfare and software dependence make it doubly vulnerable.”
He says that it is vital, when we now import half our vegetables and four-fifths of our fruit, to wake up to the crisis, with communities taking their own action towards resilience.
“We’ve got to build up more production here, not out of petty nationalism, but out of we’ve got good land, good people, good resources, good infrastructure. It’s a crazy misuse of land not to do that.”
The event is chaired by Rt. Hon. Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, Chair of the Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Supported by Nord Dallas and Orkney Islands Council’s Crown Estate Community Led Development Fund
Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University of London’s Centre for Food Policy, which he founded in 1994 and directed until 2016. For four decades he has researched, written, advised and lectured on the food system at international, national and local levels, particularly in relation to health, environment, social justice, the political economy and consumer culture. He previously spent seven years as a hill farmer, an experience which has shaped his work ever since.
