The UK’s food and farming systems reached a crossroads with the release of the Climate Change Committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget (CB7). Energy, manufacturing, and other sectors are decarbonizing, leaving agriculture as the UK’s second-highest emitting sector by 2040, accounting for 27% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. This raises a fundamental question about our food system and the land we use for it: is it primarily for conventional food production or a multifunctional resource that can balance production with carbon sequestration and resilience? This perspective brings the vital importance of food system transformation into sharp focus—not only for its role in addressing climate change but as the route to food security.
“In recent years, ‘net zero’ in energy has become synonymous with national security”, notes Emily Norton, recognizing that energy resilience results from a transition to local, clean, renewable sources. Why shouldn’t our approach to food security follow a similar path? The very structures in our food system designed to ensure stability—specialization, just-in-time supply chains, and global sourcing—are already creating profound vulnerabilities in a climate-changed world.
Meanwhile, the food on our plates remains largely absent from many climate conversations. Ali Morpeth and Mike Barry rightly point out that our approach to food lacks clarity. While we’ve created clear technological pathways for transport and energy—entailing more straightforward “swaps” such as EVs for petrol cars or heat pumps for gas boilers, there is nothing similar for food. And, while dietary shifts account for a seemingly modest portion of needed household emissions reductions, this vastly understates their importance in addressing climate change.
Unlike switching out a boiler or a car, transforming what we eat touches on deeply personal choices, cultural traditions, health considerations, rural livelihoods, and complex supply chains. Food isn’t just a technical and political challenge but a highly social one—and this is precisely why it demands more of our attention, not less, as we consider the pathway to a climate-resilient future.
Climate Volatility: The new food security threat
By the 2040s, the world will likely have passed 1.5°C of warming. The widespread extreme weather events of 2023–24 may only hint at what’s coming. These are no longer distant hypotheticals but realities threatening food availability, price stability, and broader economic security. Already retailers have noted they are sourcing from scarcity rather than abundance.
Climate impacts will dramatically reshape our food systems—disrupting supply chains, triggering population movements, and amplifying economic harm that feeds into conflict and instability. As these pressures intensify, food security will increasingly be recognized as a cornerstone of national security, requiring strategic rather than merely market-based approaches.
With 40% of UK food currently imported, our existing approach leaves us vulnerable to climate disruptions far beyond our borders. A strategic approach to climate resilience strengthens our food security by reducing long-term vulnerabilities to climate disruptions—much as energy security is strengthened through renewable sources reducing reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets.
Beyond Self-Sufficiency: Redefining security through diversity
Traditional conceptions of food security often equate it with self-sufficiency achieved through maximizing domestic food production. This approach fails to recognize the interconnectedness of modern security challenges, particularly concerning climate change.
A more nuanced understanding emerges when we consider how land use efficiency contributes to security. The UK could potentially achieve greater food resilience through strategic diversification of agricultural systems and optimization of our land footprint. For example, the Food and Trade Advisory Group convened by the Climate Change Committee concluded that “food security can be achieved through a much smaller land footprint if the UK has lower meat and dairy consumption”. This challenges the notion that producing more of everything domestically—regardless of resource intensity or emissions—is the route to security.
Instead, true food security in a climate-changed world requires optimizing for resilience through diversity—in production methods, land use, and diets.
- In production systems, moving beyond monoculture towards mixed farming and agroecological approaches that enhance ecosystem functions while reducing input costs and emissions.
- In land use, integrating food production with carbon sequestration, biodiversity enhancement, flood management, and renewable energy generation—all increasing our systemic resilience to climate instability while diversifying rural economies.
- In diets, shifting towards more varied, nutrient-dense food choices that align climate and public health goals. As Morpeth and Barry note there is evidence for reducing ultra-processed foods, moderating red meat consumption, and embracing plant-rich diets—this simultaneously improves health outcomes while lowering emissions in the food system.
This approach transforms our concept of security from maximizing production to optimizing for resilience—creating systems that can withstand climate shocks rather than remaining vulnerable to them.
A Shared Vision: Distributing responsibility
For this transformation to be successful, we require a fair distribution of responsibility and a shared vision that moves beyond unproductive binaries of farmers versus environmentalists or producers versus consumers. In this vision, everyone has responsibilities for the transformation:
- For farmers, transitioning from a focus on production, to multifunctional stewardship of land, carbon, and biodiversity.
- For supply chain actors, moving beyond “efficiency at all costs”, towards building redundancy and resilience while investing in innovations like alternative proteins and supporting a more diet-friendly choice environment.
- For policymakers, creating coherent frameworks that align incentives across the currently fragmented system, where responsibility for food is integrated rather than siloed across decision-making bodies and UK nations.
- For consumers, approaching dietary shifts as important for improved health—engaging people in personal wellbeing, which they care highly about—and recognising the co-benefits that come from healthier diets, including delivering greenhouse gas reductions.
The CB7 pathway recognizes this through its balanced approach to change across the system. In addition, the citizens’ panel convened by the CCC highlighted interconnectedness outlined above, finding general acceptance of the need for change alongside concerns about farmers’ livelihoods and affordability of alternatives. These add further strength to the possibility of a shared vision where responsibility is distributed equitably.
From Vision to Action: The path forward
Repositioning food system transformation as a national security imperative gives us a framework for action, but implementation requires adaptive pathways rather than rigid planning. The path forward is not a set route, but includes:
- Creating coherent policy frameworks that align incentives across the food system, from farm to fork. This means breaking down silos between agricultural, environmental, health, and economic policy to enable system-wide transformation.
- Developing transition pathways for farmers that recognise their crucial role as food producers and stewards of land, carbon, and biodiversity by establishing financial mechanisms and knowledge-sharing platforms that enable income diversification while maintaining viable agricultural enterprises.
- Redesigning food environments to make healthy and sustainable choices more accessible, affordable, and appealing through changes in product development, marketing and retail environments.
- Building climate resilience into supply chains by investing in infrastructure and practices that can withstand increasing climate volatility while reducing emissions.
The transition is already underway. As climate effects become more intense and frequent, the distinction between climate action and security will continue to blur. Just as renewable energy has been reframed from an environmental luxury to a security necessity, food system transformation towards resilience optimization must be recognised as essential to national security in a climate-changed world.
This isn’t about sacrifice, as the food systems shift can be framed elsewhere, but transformation—creating systems that enhance rather than undermine everyone’s long-term resilience. If this shift in thinking is made, the results have revolutionary potential: a food system where security comes not from maximising output but from enhancing relationships—between ecological communities and agricultural landscapes, between communities and their foodscapes, between present stewardship and future possibilities.
In reimagining food security for a climate-changed world, we may discover not only a more resilient system but a more fulfilling relationship with food itself. The future of food security lies not in clinging to our current production models, but in creating new models of interconnection that honour the living systems sustaining us all.
I write about the future of food and the connections between our food systems, the environment and public health. Sign up for my newsletter.
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