Airy, Airy, Au Contraire

The UK once held strategic food reserves, albeit very limited. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, our governments decided they were no longer necessary, as private retailers would maintain sufficient stocks. As the National Preparedness Commission points out, this policy coincided with decisions by the big retailers to stop holding stocks and switch to a just-in-time system: goodbye warehouses, hello logistics. No subsequent government appears to have noticed that its food-security assumptions are based on conditions that no longer exist. Perhaps they looked away out of the fear of being labelled interventionist. Perhaps they fear criticism more than crisis. Today, as far as I can tell, the government’s sole food storage intervention is a single unpublicised paragraph on its Prepare website. It instructs us to “Put together an emergency kit of items at home. This could include: Non-perishable food that doesn’t need cooking … how much you need will vary based on your own circumstances.” Invaluable advice, I’m sure. That scarcely anyone has seen it, that many people have no space for an emergency food store and no money to buy it with is just bad luck. Perhaps we don’t deserve to survive.