DEFRA PUBLISH UK FOOD SECURITY REPORT 2024

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published the UK Food Security Report 2024.  

The report examines past, current, and future trends relevant to food security, and is split into 5 ‘themes’. Key takeouts from the report are: 

Theme 1: Global Food Availability 

• Continued stable growth in the production of food, despite geopolitical and climate shocks. The global trading system in food has also been stable.  

• The number of undernourished people around the world is increasing.  

• Climate change, nature loss and water insecurity pose significant risks to the ability of global food production to meet demand over the longer term.  

• There is weak productivity growth globally which makes this more challenging. 

Theme 2: UK Food Supply Sources 

• The UK’s overall balance of trade and production is broadly stable.  

• Extreme weather events continue to have a significant effect on domestic production.  

• The UK continues to be highly dependent on imports to meet consumer demand for fruit, vegetables and seafood.  

• Long term decline in the UK’s natural capital is a pressing risk to UK food production. 

Theme 3: Food Supply Chain Resilience 

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in input costs such as energy and fertiliser.  

• Agri-food sector labour shortages continue.  

• While there was a sharp fall in volume of imports of Feed, Food and Drink to the UK in 2021, imports have increased slightly since then and the EU remains the UK’s largest external supplier.  

• Single points of failure in food supply chains pose resilience risks. Many food businesses have shown resilience and recovery in response to shocks, but investment levels are not back to levels before the price shock in 2022. 

Theme 4: Household Food Security 

• While a large majority of households in the UK continue to be food secure, there has been a notable decrease in food secure households. 

•  There has been a notable rise in inflation both overall and for the category of food and non-alcoholic beverages since the beginning of 2021.  

• Most people do not meet government dietary recommendations, with those from lower-income groups less likely to meet recommendations than those from the highest-income groups.  

• Rates of food insecurity vary greatly by demographics, with a notable difference in levels and experiences between income groups. 

Theme 5: Consumer Confidence and Food Safety. 

• Levels of trust in Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) have remained relatively high.  

• There has been an increase in consumers reporting concerns (prompted) about food prices since 2021.  

• Laboratory confirmed reports of pathogens that can cause foodborne gastrointestinal disease and the proportional trends in foodborne disease outbreak surveillance data generally remained relatively stable over the period 2019 to 2023, with the exception of the COVID19 pandemic years.  

• Of the businesses inspected, analysis indicates an upward trend in food business hygiene compliance. However, there is still a backlog in the number of businesses awaiting inspection. 

You can read the report in full at: UK Food Security Report 2024