How Britain Lost Control of Its Food Supply
June 17, 2026 · Frisian News
British farmers warned at a major agricultural show that food security cannot be taken for granted. They drew parallels to the energy crisis, arguing that decades of policy favoring imports over independence made both systems fragile.
British farmers gathered at the Bath and West Show this June were not talking about crop yields or weather. They were warning about food security. The parallel they drew to the energy crisis was sharp: both are now controlled by forces outside Britain, both can be cut off by decisions made elsewhere, and both became that way through decades of policy that favored imports over independence. Food security cannot be assumed. Building it requires different choices.
The concern is not new, but it is rarely stated plainly. Since the Second World War, Britain has progressively shifted from producing most of its own food to importing roughly 40 percent of it. This was not a simple matter of economics or population growth. Policy made it happen. Consolidation of farmland reduced the number of farms by two-thirds since 1984. Policymakers wrote regulations favoring industrial-scale operations, pushing smaller producers out. Subsidies rewarded acreage and output per unit, not resilience or local supply. Britain signed international trade deals on the assumption that food would always be cheap and always be available.
Today, food in Britain moves through a chain controlled almost entirely by processors and supermarket chains. Farmers produce for contracts they do not negotiate, at prices they do not set. A handful of retailers control what reaches your table. If that chain breaks, even for a few weeks, there is no backup. No local suppliers. No stored reserves. No distributed network of smaller farms that could absorb the shock. The system is efficient for profit. It is fragile for people.
The energy crisis should have warned us. For decades, we outsourced energy security to cheaper suppliers elsewhere. When the assumption broke, households and small businesses paid the bill while companies insulated themselves from the damage. Food is about to face the same tests: climate shocks, trade friction, supply-chain rupture. The difference is that you cannot choose not to eat.
The farmers are right. We cannot take food security for granted. But fixing it requires naming what broke it. Not scarcity. Not fate. Policy. And the policy that built this system has no interest in undoing it.
Published June 17, 2026 · Frisian News