Climate experts urge food stockpiling to avoid shortages

Ministers have been urged to consider “large-scale national food stockpiling” by the influential Climate Change Committee (CCC) to stave off future disruption to supplies.

In its Fourth Climate Risk Assessment, the CCC also said government should undertake “systemic stress-testing in the medium to long term to work out what could go catastrophically wrong in the food system”.

Alongside these recommendations, the committee proposed a formal target for domestic food production to be “sustainably maintained at 60% at least” until 2050, as part of the country’s long-term climate adaptation strategy.

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Professor Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City St George’s, University of London, told Farmers Weekly the 60% target was “not ambitious enough”, suggesting it should be 80%.

But he strongly supported the CCC’s stockpiling recommendation.

“The just-in-time system is intrinsically vulnerable,” he said.

“It’s hyper efficient for what the food chain wants, but it’s terrible if there’s any disruption, and that’s now having to be rethought.”

Prof Lang said other countries were already moving faster than Britain on food resilience planning, particularly in northern Europe.

Norway and Sweden have introduced new food preparedness planning and are examining stronger national food security measures in response to climate and geopolitical risks, while other countries such as China and India are building reserves.

Asked whether the UK government would actually act on the recommendation, Prof Lang said the response was uncertain, but argued the direction of travel was becoming unavoidable.

The CCC warned the UK remains heavily exposed to overseas disruption because around 40% of the food consumed in the UK is imported.

The report said by 2050 “simultaneous crop failures in multiple major producer regions, or significant disruption of food supply chains, could lead to increased food prices and more volatile inflation”.

At the same time, the CCC noted British farmers are already dealing with increasingly volatile weather, with 2025 yields more than 10% lower than the 10-year average for crops such as wheat and oats.

Over the next two years, the report suggested farmers be incentivised to take actions such as storing water on farms, changing practices and varying what is produced in order to adapt to a changing climate.