Amid reflections this month on the continued and escalating turbulence in global markets (finance, energy, food) largely brought on by the actions of the current U.S. administration, I found myself focused on the disruptive linkages to food security, national security, and global security.

And I realized that a handful of open UK-based publications on my laptop provided a valuable action frame for policymakers in three key areas – food waste, food security, and food sovereignty. 

First, food waste.  A few months into the war in Ukraine, with the world being rocked by higher food and fertilizer prices, Arthur Neslen of The Guardian provided an extraordinary wake-up call for European citizens in a piece noting that the EU wastes more food annually (153 million tonnes) than it imports.  Neslen referenced the No Time To Waste report from UK-based Feedback (now Foodrise) which strongly outlined the case for the EU to adopt a comprehensive and legally binding food waste reduction target of 50% by 2030 (consistent with Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals). 

The report noted that food waste in the EU accounts for 6% of its total emissions (not to mention all of the related resource costs involved in food production and distribution) and carries a financial cost of €143 billion per year (the warming impact of those emissions is of course not contained to the EU alone but is borne by all nations of the world).  It also highlighted the social cost of that wasted food, noting that 33 million EU citizens could not afford a quality meal every second day, while adding that the costs of climate change and food insecurity disproportionately impact those in marginalized communities. 

Also notable from Neslen’s piece was a comment from a former senior FAO economist (Abdolreza Abbassian) that the era of cheap food was over, and that “because of the energy situation, the fertiliser situation, uncertainties in the world, including in transport and shipments, not to mention climate change we have to accept that we are not going to see food prices at the level of a decade ago.”

Just over three years later, that sounds exactly like the state of the world today.

Second, food security.  In a powerful piece (How food waste became the climate crisis no one wants to stop) designed to impact decision makers at COP30 last fall, Taz Kahn (founder of London’s Community Kitchen) discussed the disconnect between high food insecurity and excessive food waste in the UK.  Khan appropriately referred to this disconnect as “the moral contradiction of our age: children in Britain starting school hungry while edible food is destroyed at scale because our systems make waste cheaper than compassion.”

He also described the excessive waste of food in the UK (10.7 million tonnes across multiple sectors with a value of £17 billion) amidst rising hunger as “Britain’s quietest scandal,” as well as being one of the most overlooked drivers of the climate crisis. 

Zeroing in on the food security element, Khan noted that about half of the UK’s discarded food is perfectly edible, adding that “if we are serious about food security and climate leadership, tackling food waste must be treated as a national priority.”  Further, he chastised stakeholders for the casual acceptance of high food waste, noting that “the scandal is not that waste exists, it is that we designed systems that make waste rational.”

That last point requires that we bring a greater focus on humanity to food systems, a theme which I covered in detail in this July post.

Third, food sovereignty.  Early this month, Helena Horton of The Guardian addressed the issue of food sovereignty, citing recent commentary from Professor Tim Lang at the National Farmers Union conference that the UK should be stockpiling food in readiness for climate shocks and war and working to achieve food resilience.

Horton referenced Lang’s comments that the UK was “ducking” the idea of food self-sufficiency, and that “The default position that others can feed us is hardwired into the British state system, and indeed into the nature of how agrifood capitalism works in Britain.  Others are wiser.  Others are stockpiling.”

These comments are notable in the wake of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos in January, in which he discussed the end of the rules-based international order and noted that “A country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself, has few options.”

Just last month, Damian Carrington explored the fragility of the UK’s food system, noting that imports comprise 35% of its food supply (other estimates are between 40-50%) – making the country highly vulnerable to shocks from extreme weather events linked to climate change, cyber-attacks, international conflicts and/or other events that could disrupt just-in-time food supply chains. 

Carrington’s piece delved into a 2023 study by multiple researchers (including Lang) that explored the risks of civil unrest in the UK from food system disruption.  Significantly, about one third of the food system experts interviewed felt that over a 50-year time frame the likelihood of a catastrophic event was more likely than not.

In addition, a just-published study (Potential Pathways and Solutions to Acute Food System Crisis in the UK) built upon the above research in citing the drivers of food system vulnerability, how such risks lead to pathways of significant negative impact, and what measures can be employed to mitigate harm and increase resilience.   

Several issues creating vulnerability in the UK food system were listed, including the low profitability of farming (stemming from high food supply chain consolidation and poor implementation of farming subsidies, climate change and ecological degradation), increased competition for land, increased digitization of food supply chains (resulting in susceptibility to cyber-attacks and infrastructure failure), the tightly linked just-in-time nature of the food supply, and food insecurity (which is exacerbated by food price inflation).

Key pathways to acute food system crisis were identified, including cyber-attacks, extreme weather events, international conflict, and food price and availability shocks.

Through Lines and Lessons

There are several important through lines among these three major themes of food waste, food security, and food sovereignty for the UK, and all nations of the world, in this turbulent period – beginning with the essential need to properly value food resources.  

For individual nations, food security equates to national security.  Significant disruptions to the food supply and/or food prices can quickly lead to civil unrest.

And when food security in multiple nations is disrupted, global security similarly deteriorates.

For the last several decades, a culture of abundance around food resources (particularly in developed countries) has led to insufficient valuation of food resources, thus normalizing high levels of food loss and waste.  As the 2024 Food Waste Index report noted, food waste across the world exceeds 1 billion tonnes annually, equivalent to 19% of food available to consumers being wasted at the retail, foodservice, and household levels while also consuming roughly 30% of the world’s agricultural land.  UN Secretary General Guterres addressed this cultural failure in his remarks on the International Day of Zero Waste this month, pointing to the fact that each day we discard an amount of food equivalent to one billion meals while 9% of humanity goes hungry while reminding us that “we cannot take food for granted.”  

Thus, any nation seeking to enhance the security of the food supply for its citizens, particularly those nations with an extremely high import percentage, would do well to start with comprehensive efforts to reduce food waste (at market and beyond) and food loss (on farm) – which in turn reduces the amount of food that must be produced. 

Second, food security requires not just a sufficient quantity of food, but also a quality focus – the provision of sufficient nutrition for all citizens.  Because much of wasted food today is edible, comprehensive food waste reduction programs can (and should) be harnessed to enable nations to divert high-quality calories to citizens for immediate nutritional benefit.  Further, upcycling programs can be supported to accelerate (and normalize) the transformation of traditionally-viewed waste streams into value-added food byproducts, advancing the shift from linear to circular models.

Third, a focus on preventing the occurrence of food waste helps to maximize environmental impact by reducing emissions and related resource consumption while also freeing up capital and labor to directly aid other systemic efforts to enhance food sovereignty.  

A second though line involves interconnection.

Food is central and critical to all that we do, and the food system impacts, and draws on, many other systems – especially energy and water.  Thus, when global energy supplies and fertilizer shipments are disrupted overnight due to conflict, or water shortages result from climate-driven drought conditions, food supplies and food prices are immediately impacted.

And as the world learned during the Covid-19 pandemic, today’s tightly-wound food system, focused on efficiency through just-in-time deliveries and highly concentrated among a small number of large organizations, is also highly vulnerable to any disruption along food supply chains. 

A third through line involves choice, and I’d add humanity-focused choice.

Nations of the world can choose a sustainable, resilient and equitable food system that properly values food resources, minimizes food loss and waste, provides adequate and affordable nutrition for all citizens, and does so within planetary boundaries – in keeping with the UN’s continual efforts to transform food systems to accelerate progress toward the SDGs.

The current disruption to food systems from geopolitical conflict undoubtedly makes this transformational effort harder, but also more necessary – as does the certainty of disruption to food production around the world from extreme weather events driven by climate change. 

As policymakers react to a changing world order and appropriately elevate country-level focus on food sovereignty, they would do well to immediately prioritize food loss and waste reduction (including prevention efforts and multi-sector initiatives to maximize the utility of existing food resources) and food security initiatives that provide proper nutrition for all their citizens.

At the same time, despite the turbulence, they must not lose sight of the importance of transforming food systems to provide sufficient nutrition for all in a sustainable, equitable, and resilient manner.    

The UN’s Global Food Systems Transformation 2025 report highlights many recent points of progress, noting that “since the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, the movement to reimagine food systems as engines of climate action, sustainable growth and shared prosperity has gained remarkable momentum and urgency” while also outlining several key priority areas going forward (including renewed global commitment and inclusive governance, enhanced investments in scientific capacity and context-specific technologies coupled with local knowledge, the unlocking of finance and investment, and more).

Nations of the world have a shared responsibility to continue – and accelerate – this work through new collaborative alliances.

Achieving that transformation drives progress on multiple Sustainable Development Goals and can be expected to mitigate drivers of conflict in the future.