Feeding Britain: A Food Security Emergency

Britain is facing a food security emergency. Over the past decade, families have endured the highest food price inflation in 40 years, while the proportion of food-secure households in the UK has fallen significantly - leaving hundreds of thousands of families struggling to put nutritious food on the table.

Currently, the UK relies on imports for around 40% of its food, leaving your weekly shop dangerously exposed to global supply chain disruptions, extreme weather events, and international conflicts. Yet, instead of backing British farmers to grow more at home, successive governments have let our agricultural sector down. The Conservatives cut real-terms farm payments by £722 million, and Labour has compounded the crisis by cutting the agricultural budget in England by a further £100 million a year - even as farm input costs for fuel, feed, and fertiliser have skyrocketed.

Liberal Democrats believe that caring for nature and producing food go hand in hand. In an increasingly volatile world, Britain must become far more self-sufficient. Today, Liberal Democrat members passed a comprehensive policy to back British farmers, lower food costs, protect the natural environment, and guarantee national food security.

Our new policy calls on the Government to:

• Introduce a Good Food Bill setting food security targets, a £1bn increase in the farming budget, and a target to produce at least 75% of our food by 2035.
   
• Back British farming and food development by introducing a new seasonal agricultural workers scheme with guaranteed minimum standards, public procurement rules requiring UK-sourced food in schools, hospitals and government canteens, and Local Food Plans requiring councils to assess food accessibility in their area.
   
• Protect consumers and nature alongside production with a ban on unlabelled shrinkflation, enhanced Environmental Land Management payments, a permanently reopened Sustainable Farming Incentive, and a statutory annual food security audit to Parliament.

England is currently the only country in Europe whose farm payments scheme fails to explicitly support food security. Expecting farmers to restore nature while starving them of financial viability is a recipe for disaster.

The Liberal Democrats are standing up for British farmers, protecting our countryside, and taking decisive action to secure affordable, locally grown food for generations to come.