“Our food system is damaging the very foundations of our food security.” When Paul Behrens delivered this assessment to over a thousand policymakers and business leaders in Westminster last month, it could have been a counsel of despair. It wasn’t.
That’s because Behrens, speaking at the National Emergency Briefing on climate and nature, framed the challenge as an opportunity for transformation that could simultaneously strengthen resilience, improve health, support farmers, and restore nature. He’s not the only one—the AFN Roadmap for Resilience arrived at similar conclusions and echoes many years of work from people across the food system. The evidence is increasingly converging on what’s needed—the question is: what does it take to translate this convergence into political will for action?
A shared diagnosis
The briefing marked the culmination of a year in which independent voices converged on the same essential message about UK food security.
Tim Lang’s Just in Case report for the National Preparedness Commission landed in February. It laid bare the UK’s lack of contingency planning for food emergencies. Comparable nations have established strategic reserves and emergency protocols to a much greater extent than the UK, which is shown to rely too heavily on market mechanisms and just-in-time logistics, leaving us exposed to unexpected events. Lang’s analysis made clear that this isn’t a gap we can afford to leave unfilled.
In the spring, industry insiders confirmed this vulnerability in an anonymous memo that described a food sector heading towards inevitable disruption, with resilience planning based on wishful thinking rather than honest risk assessment. Here were senior leaders with decades of experience coming together to sound the alarm, speaking out because internal channels had failed to produce adequate responses.
By autumn, the AFN Roadmap for Resilience was published, identifying the same systemic fragility. Drawing on over a hundred contributions from people working across the food system, the Roadmap used scenario analysis and modelling to test potential interventions against four radically different futures, showing that certain transformations are necessary regardless of which future unfolds. The current trajectory, unsurprisingly, falls short in all of them.
November’s emergency briefing provided a platform for scientists to deliver the diagnosis directly to those with the power to act on it. Behrens synthesized the challenges into a single stark formulation: a food system that undermines the conditions for its own security. And with it, he outlined the opportunities that he and others have been converging on: transformation that could deliver benefits across multiple dimensions simultaneously.
A credible vision
Convergence on a shared diagnosis is one thing, but alignment on what transformation could deliver is striking. Across the year, a consistent message has emerged: the changes that address food system vulnerability will create benefits across multiple dimensions at the same time.
Behrens framed this explicitly at the briefing. A shift towards plant-rich diets would significantly reduce agricultural emissions while freeing up land for nature recovery, carbon sequestration, and domestic food production. This is not about eliminating animal products, but rebalancing while still including dairy daily and meat weekly. The dietary shift he described could release an area the size of Scotland for these purposes. Farmers, rather than bearing the costs of these changes, could see stable or higher incomes through diversification and payment for public goods. The NHS would benefit from reducing diet-related disease. And the UK’s food security would be strengthened by reduced dependence on climate-vulnerable imports.
This projection aligns with the analysis in the AFN Roadmap, which identified the same set of co-benefits and interdependencies between resilient production, smarter land use, and healthier diets. The Roadmap’s scenario testing showed these transformations reinforce each other as interconnected changes that work best when pursued together.
Reframing transformation as an opportunity for multiple co-benefits matters, not least because it shifts the political calculus. When change is presented as sacrifice, it meets predictable resistance. But change that delivers healthier people, thriving farms, restored nature, and enhanced food security tells a different story: a credible, positive vision of the future to move towards rather than just a cost to bear.
The missing commitment
If anything is clear from these events, it’s that evidence is no longer the constraint, and the tools exist to enable change. The AFN Roadmap sets out phased pathways to 2050. Policy frameworks and guidelines for their implementation have been developed that can help shape food systems for the better. During the Second World War, the UK transformed farming, land use, and diets at scale and with extraordinary speed. While it was under different circumstances, that experience demonstrates what’s possible with determination and coordination. Crucially, we now have the chance to act before crises force our hand. What’s missing is a sustained commitment to do so.
Both the AFN Roadmap and the emergency briefing called for a response on the scale of wartime mobilization that is cross-party, long term, and protected from the political winds that too often shape food policy. That’s because doing the necessary work takes time. Restoring soil health, diversifying supply chains, and reshaping food environments, among many other developments, don’t fit neatly into ministerial timelines. The industry whistleblowers’ memo pointed to precisely this mismatch, with businesses watching vulnerabilities building but feeling held back by competitive pressures and governance structures that resist the kind of big, long-term response the situation demands.
It’s not as though successive governments haven’t recognized the need for coordination. Tim Lang’s Just in Case report documents a Cabinet Food Sub-Committee that existed briefly from 2008 to 2010 to support the creation of the Food 2030 strategy, only to be abolished after the 2010 election. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government created a Food Resilience Industry Forum for direct exchange with industry, although it ceased to operate when the immediate crisis receded. Building the capacity for sustained, long-term action on food system resilience requires governance structures that outlast the crises that show that we need them.
Is 2025 a turning point?
Turning points are only visible in retrospect. But what can be said is that this year has seen independent voices converge on the same diagnosis and elements of a shared and credible vision of what transformation can deliver.
This clarity now must be catalysed into action. The emergency briefing’s organizers are calling for a televised national address, recognizing that political will doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. Public engagement matters enormously; so too are institutional arrangements that will enable today’s commitments to survive tomorrow’s political pressures. The diagnosis is in. The prescription is credible. The frameworks exist. The political commitment to transform our food systems for the benefit of all must be made—and this is a choice, not an inevitability. Whether 2025 becomes a turning point depends on what follows. Government must lead, and the groundwork has been laid. Now we need the political will to make it happen.
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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