Digest: The case for food system resilience is getting stronger

Last October we published our Roadmap for Resilience, arguing that the UK food system faces a future of intensifying disruption and that transformational change rather than incremental adjustment is the only credible response.

Since then, three developments have tested that argument:

• A National Security Assessment has identified biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as a direct threat to UK food security and national security.
• Military conflict in the Middle East has shut down the Strait of Hormuz and sent fertiliser and energy prices surging.
• Defra has published its long-awaited Land Use Framework for England.

We’re writing this digest as Root and Reason, the food resilience collective – the next chapter of the AFN Network+ you already know. We’ve evolved because the challenge has evolved. Building a resilient food system demands more than research: it requires connecting evidence with practice, policy with lived experience, and urgency with long-term thinking. That’s the work we’re getting stuck into, and this digest is a first look at how the landscape has shifted.

Here’s what you need to know.

Quick Take

• A national security assessment identified ecosystem collapse as a direct threat to UK food security, with some critical ecosystems on track to begin collapsing from 2030. It warns that the UK’s reliance on imported food and fertilisers makes it acutely vulnerable to supply shocks and geopolitical competition and reframes ecological decline from an environmental concern to a matter of national resilience.
• The Iran conflict has exposed how quickly a geopolitical shock cascades through food systems. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted global fertiliser trade, sending urea prices surging. UK farmers face rising costs for fuel and fertiliser, with knock-on effects for yields and food prices in the seasons ahead.
• Defra’s Land Use Framework is an important step, but stops short of the integrated approach the challenge demands. It acknowledges that around 20% of agricultural land may need to change use over the next 25 years and commits to not increasing import dependence. But it sets no quantitative targets, is weak on governance, and carefully avoids questions of dietary change.
• Food resilience could serve as a unifying national mission — if government chooses to frame it that way. The political conditions are there: energy and food security are visibly connected, public awareness of supply chain fragility has grown, and the government is struggling to articulate a domestic agenda that feels urgent and relevant. Positioning food system resilience alongside energy security would give ministers a cohering theme that spans environment, health, trade and defence

Deep Dive

From environmental agenda to national security threat

The National Security Assessment identifies six ecosystems critical to UK national security, including the Amazon and Congo Basin rainforests and the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, with the risk of collapse beginning within the next decade. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the report warns, would reduce global crop yields, undermine fisheries and destabilise major food-producing regions. 

The UK’s reliance on imported food and fertilisers makes it vulnerable to supply shocks, price volatility and geopolitical competition. At home, the report concludes that “UK food production is vulnerable to ecosystem degradation and collapse”, and that “significant disruption to international markets as a result of ecosystem degradation or collapse will put UK food security at risk”.

What matters here is the reframing. Ecological decline is cast not as an environmental concern but as a structural driver of food system instability: a matter of national resilience. Ecosystem restoration becomes an essential condition of national security, not simply a desirable sustainability measure.

Crucially, the assessment accelerates the timeline for action. With the risk of critical ecosystem collapse emerging by 2030, the case for rapid, systemic transformation is more urgent than even our Roadmap for Resilience suggested. 

How a Gulf war reaches British farms

The military conflict in Iran and the wider Middle East is the latest major shock to the global food system, following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil and gas and up to one-third of global fertiliser trade normally passes, has triggered simultaneous energy, fertiliser and food-system disruptions.

Oil prices spiked above USD100–120 per barrel, while European natural gas prices rose 50–75% in the first weeks of the crisis. These energy price spikes matter for food systems because transport, refrigeration, irrigation and processing all depend on oil and gas; fertiliser production is energy-intensive; and rising oil prices increase biofuel demand, linking food and energy markets more tightly. 

Fertiliser disruption is the single most critical channel of risk: up to one-third of global fertiliser trade normally transits the Strait. Global urea prices surged in early March. Since nitrogen fertilisers underpin roughly half of global food production, sustained disruption implies lower yields and potential food shortages in coming seasons.

Although the UK is geographically distant from the Gulf, it is highly exposed. UK farmers face rapidly rising costs for fuel and fertiliser. Many arable farms, especially cereal and oilseed producers, will see margins squeezed. If farmers reduce fertiliser application, UK yields of wheat, barley and oilseed rape could fall in the 2026–27 seasons. 

The UK’s high dependence on imported fruit, vegetables and processed goods, often transported long distances, makes it especially sensitive to oil-price-driven logistics costs. Indirect shocks, such as increased biofuel demand diverting maize and vegetable oils from food markets, will further tighten global supply.

The Iran war has demonstrated how tightly interwoven the global food–energy–fertiliser nexus has become, and how quickly systemic shocks cascade across borders.  Resilience cannot be built on assumptions of stable global flows of energy and agricultural inputs. 

A Land Use Framework headed in the right direction, but not far enough

Defra’s long-awaited Land Use Framework for England attempts to set out a coherent national vision for land use and land use change in response to intensifying pressures: climate change, the need for large-scale nature restoration, demand for land for clean energy and housing, and international commitments requiring hundreds of thousands of hectares for tree planting. It acknowledges that around 20% of agricultural land may need to undergo significant changes in practice or be used for purposes other than food production over the next 25 years and commits to not becoming more dependent on food imports by 2050.

The framework represents an important shift in government thinking, recognising that multifunctional land use, strategic planning and spatial coordination of public goods are essential to food system transformation. But it stops short of grappling with the dietary and agricultural transitions required to deliver its vision. It includes no quantitative targets, is weak on governance and carefully avoids questions of diet change. Without integrating what we eat with how we use land and what we produce, the framework’s vision will remain partial and underspecified.

A mission hiding in plain sight

The UK Government has a large Parliamentary majority and a stated ambition of national renewal, but has struggled to articulate a domestic agenda that feels urgent and relevant to people’s lives. The Prime Minister on 10th April wrote that resilience is at the heart of his government’s approach but, as is commonly the case, he went on to focus on the energy system. Food system resilience could and should be central to the new resilience agenda.

Geopolitical shocks like the Gulf crisis expose systemic vulnerabilities and create political space for a more purposeful, resilience-centred approach to governing. A focus on food security alongside energy security would give ministers a unifying mission that citizens recognise as materially relevant and urgently necessary. It touches what people pay for food, the viability of farming, the resilience of supply chains, and the health of the population.

Positioning food resilience as a national mission would also enable coordination across multiple departments that currently work mostly in silos, ensuring coherent action across environment, health, trade, defence and treasury. And it would connect domestic policy to a renewed internationalism, strengthening ties with European partners at a moment when the old transatlantic assumptions no longer hold.

What now?

Six months ago, the Roadmap for Resilience argued that change is coming to the UK food system and that the choice is whether we shape it or are shaped by it. The National Security Assessment, the Iran war and the Land Use Framework have made that argument harder to dispute, and harder to defer.

The Roadmap set out three core transformations – developing stronger, more resilient farming, smarter and more integrated land use, and making healthier diets easier to access. At Root and Reason, we are united by a long-standing commitment to create a resilient food system that is prepared, empowered, and fair, where change happens with people, not to them.

In the coming months we’ll be setting out what Root and Reason’s work looks like in practice – enabling the UK food system to be more prepared, empowered and equitable. If that connects to what you’re working on, whether in government, business, front-line services or communities we want to hear from you. Please get in touch – contact@rootandreason.org.uk