I have already called for food rationing. So too now has Prof Tim Lang of City, University of London, in an article in The Conversation. Tim is one of the leading food experts in the UK. It is, of course, appropriate to note that Tim and I do know each other.
What Tim highlights are the good reasons for rationing, starting with the fact that we produce only 53% of our food and if Marcon shuts the border with France because we will not take sufficient action on coronavirus then we are in deep trouble. I very strongly suspect Tim is right. This is his article, which I think worth sharing in full:
Food security is no laughing matter at the best of times, but I gasped when I first read the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) annual food civil contingencies infrastructure report in 2018. It is barely a page long (in public at least) and assures us everything is OK and that the food system is resilient and able to withstand shocks. As the coronvirus racks the nation and panic buying continues, this complacency is about to be tested.
Few analysts of the UK food system are anything other than sober about its fragility. There is little storage. All operates on a just-in-time basis in which food travels down the supply chain — literally, just in time for when the next link or process needs it. Food businesses have been realigned to cut delays and storage. Consumers have come to expect constant flows of food, without hiccups or gaps. New industries have emerged, notably logistics and satellites which track this all from farm to shop. We are trucker-dependent now.
Only 53% of food consumed in the UK is produced in the country. Others feed the Brits. Some scientists calculate that UK external dependency is even greater, with hidden use of external land to provide animal feed.
While this distortedly efficient food revolution has been rolled out, the UK food trade gap — the difference between exports and imports by value — has widened. In 2018, food worth £46.8 billion was imported, with exports worth only £22.5 billion, leaving a food trade gap of £24.3 billion. Much of the imports are vital for health, the £10bn imports of fruit and veg in particular. UK fruit and veg growing has sunk. The UK's main “oral” export these days is whisky. Even meat — supposedly Britain's forte — is in the red. If borders close or supply chains snap, what then?
What about actual food?
Putting money to one side, UK self-reliance has been slowly dropping for decades from a high point in the early 1980s. I was among academics warning the government in 2017 to beware a no-deal Brexit, as the management of ceaseless flow of food mostly through Dover and the channel tunnel is coordinated by the UK's giant supermarkets. Just-in-time systems are easy to disrupt. The retailers privately expressed alarm to the government but the no-deal posturing continued. It ought to have led the government to prepare serious change, to put the country's food flow on a secure footing. This did not happen.
A year later, another report argued that UK food security was more fragile than most people think. It too was dismissed initially by the government, only for ministers to U-turn within days and admit ships were being chartered, including from a company which owned no ships.
Now coronavirus exposes other difficulties and deep structural weakness. It is almost as though a web of supply — from land and sea via processing, distribution, retailing and food service to consumers — was designed to undermine, not just ignore, resilience.
If food security refers to continuity of supply sufficient to meet health for all, resilience means it being able to bounce back under threat, and food capacity means having the skills, technology, planning and preparedness to do it.
The current UK food system is already weak in all senses, and has been for too long. Food and agriculture account for one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. They are also the biggest drivers of biodiversity destruction, huge users and polluters of water, and the major driver of much illness from noncommunicable diseases and food-borne pathogens, too. The UK consumes the highest rate of “ultra-processed” foods of any country in Europe. No wonder our obesity rates are alarming and the NHS under stress.
Food is the UK's biggest employer with 4.1 million workers. There's a feeding frenzy over who can make the most money from food. Currently, this is a battle between retailers, processors and food service, each taking about one-quarter of the £120 billion from the £225 billion that consumers spend on food and drink annually. The new kid on the block is home delivery — Deliveroo, Uber, Just-Eat for example — which now takes £10 billion from the £225 billion, almost as much money as farming.
The UK government believes home deliveries will enable people to self-quarantine at home during coronavirus. If one in five workers go ill, this strategy might fail, as they are often self-employed, so unable to claim sickness benefit and incentivised to keep working working to pay the bills — potentially spreading disease not protecting people from it.
Food for all the people
A crunch point for UK food policy and planning is surely approaching. The coronavirus crisis is already spawning worrying actions. Whereas under Brexit no-deal threats, stoicism ruled and “preppers” — people stocking up — were generally few. Today shelves are being stripped and queues form for supermarkets to open. It's why colleagues and I have called on the UK prime minister to set up a rational system of rationing — based on health, equity and decency — to see the country through this crisis.
The just-in-time logistics system is being stretched. This is why retailers are planning to prune supplies to bare essentials and are rationing. If this is happening with government approval, it is surely an abandonment of democratic responsibility. If not, is government not in control? For people on severely low incomes, meanwhile, reliance on food banks is creaking. Donations are down. We are clearly not all in this together.
Coming weeks and months will stretch government and industry credibility, and also the public. It is a test of identity and whether the national interest really could mean all the people. We ought to be preparing a long-term redirection of the food system. However, the current agriculture bill before parliament doesn't suggest that. Instead, it's an economist's bill mainly designed to redirect subsidies around the as-yet-untested notion of “public money for public goods”.
Food production and equitable distribution barely feature. We ought to be demanding that Public Health England and the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast revise the Eatwell Guide, our national healthy eating guidelines, around sustainable diets, combining health, environment and social criteria such as affordability. These are what should drive production and determine rationing, if circumstances deteriorate.
Meanwhile, it is the food retailers who are beginning to ration supply. This is unacceptable in a democracy. If to happen, it ought to be in the open — and guided by health and sustainability. Surely the “public good” lies in feeding all well, according to need not income. Those values are what got the UK through the second world war, as our Churchill-inspired prime minister ought to know.
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Agreed. Thank you for posting this.
Also, because of the CLIMATE crisis, ENERGY rationing: TRADABLE ENERGY QUOTAS (www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/teqs/) rather than same-for-everyone would have advantages – at least to start with: a) the shock to the wealthy of same-for-all rationing would encourage them to resist implementation with ferocity; b) a black market would ensue; better to have an official market that has a better chance of being effectively policed; c) ‘tradability’ would be a way of gradually transferring wealth from those with high energy-use habits to the poor, most of whom will have much lower energy consumption.
Because of the HOMES crisis, it is time for FLOOR SPACE rationing or perhaps, TRADABLE HOUSING QUOTAS. The rich commonly have more than one home and large homes with rooms aplenty. Young people cannot afford a home and/or are paying high rents and of course, too many people have no home at all.
Factor in flooding caused predominantly by climate change; add sea inundation as storms become more frequent and sea levels rise and the case becomes compelling.
Johnson’s hero Churchill managed the rationing approach during WW2. I remember the 1973 fuel crisis and how petrol coupons appeared within days. Supermarket loyalty cards and computer systems can easily be programmed to restrict multiple sales to those who make circular tours panic buying everything. Tim Lang would be a good choice to oversee the process; his agenda is ensuring people are fed with good quality food, and that’s what is needed
Suppose the neo-libs will be having a go at you soon
As I recall it, the 1973 issued petrol coupons were left over from the Suez crisis of 1956.
And WW2 food rationing, as I understand it, drew on experience from WW1.
But that sort of institutional memory has been lost. Interesting to see comments in the paper from centenarian who just about remember (from infancy) the 1918-19 flu epidemic.
As a rural resident I’ve been mulling over how sustained our flow of goods could be if shutdowns and illness escalate. Obviously there are no deliveroo etc in these areas so that puts paid to that and quite simply it is a stupid idea.
I know that there are processes in train to deal with some of the food issues at a local level and hope to see that implemented soon. I also know that the local foodbank is run entirely by over 70’s who are required to social distance but there are plans to have people from other groups which are closed for now to help.
This UK government seem to thrive on creating anxiety and confusion and in that regard are doing a wonderful job.
By chance I’ve gone in to a bit more detail on the actual distribution system in case of interest:
http://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/dont-panic-logistics
I’ve setup home delivery for my Mum (77). The delivery calander extends out to three weeks hence but every slot on every van already taken so home delivery isn’t a reliable option.
There has to be rationing of these slots now
Sainsbury’s has, at long last, started giving priority for online deliveries to its elderly and vulnerable customers, and limiting delivery slots to one per week. But this is restricted for now to existing customers, and they don’t know how many of their customers are elderly or vulnerable.
Government should not be leaving it to the supermarkets to introduce rationing. Will it ever start getting a grip?
The fact that supermarkets didn’t proactively stop panic buying in the first place shows to me that it is a hugely dysfunctional system that we have out there. It is does not bode well so I think that you are right to raise this.
Local supermarkets are apparently well stocked today – apart from loo roll and soaps etc. Plenty of fresh food.
I agree though that deliveries from EU are quickly capable of stopping so we could be in real problems very quickly.
I do not agree that government should step in with food rationing etc. as this would be handed to people with no experience of food chains and the like. I suspect they would make the problem worse. Hopefully supermarkets will up their game in terms of managing customers. Regardless of how we got here, we have to use what is available and the expertise they have.
As an aside, DVSA have suspended MOT tests for lorries – DVSA provides testers to commercial garages with MOT bays as well as their own testing centres. Those in the trade rightly argue that testers can easily maintain a safe distance from the lorry drivers bringing their trucks in.
My point being that (some) public sector bodies seem incapable of working through procedures to keep things moving.
Those who can, might consider the old WW2 campaign: “Dig for victory”. We’ve grown fruit and veg for decades and although we’re not self-sufficient we supply a lot of what we need. We still have some stuff in the garden, swedes, leeks, cabbage, sprouts, broccoli – all planted last year – rhubarb is coming up and we’ve just put in some broad beans, brassica plants, beetroot and cut-and-come-again lettuce.
Many of us need to change our habits: eat local and in season.
We should take a few tips from Mrs Beeton too, and learn to cook better. Of course, at least one partner in a relationship will need to have the time to do this, so the current pressure on both to work all hours just to keep running in the same place needs to be relaxed. If we’re to find the time to eat better, the rewards for work very much need to be better distributed.
I think rationing is an excellent idea, if it employs coupons, issue by the government. That way each person is entitled to a particular amount of food, but it doesn’t matter who does the shopping for them.
At the moment, the notion of ‘only two per customer’ doesn’t take into account how many people that customer might be shopping for. Households differ in size, and some people are shopping for elderly family, friends and neighbours.