When do you think we're going to start feeling it more acutely?

Well, I think we are now in the sense of if you look back over the last decade, we've had food price spikes caused by climate change.

We've had food price spike caused by COVID-19.

We've had continuing food inflation caused by the invasion of Ukraine.

We've got a shortfall in production in Europe this year because of climate.

We've got the war in the Middle East blocking trade routes.

We've got the Panama Canal with reduced flow.

So where do you think this is going with the business-as-usual model? What are you imagining is going to break or creak first? Well, the

He told me food production should be a priority.

The issue of the world of, you know, more or less permanent crisis that we're living in at the moment is that food price inflation, cost of living crises are permanently with us.

And so whilst we're a rich nation, that doesn't mean that everybody can afford food, and food insecurity in the country is going up.

But I'm slightly more worried about the, the notion of we will always be able to import food whenever we need it, even though it's going to cost us more money, as opposed to thinking about, well, what do we need to do to stimulate more production at home for consumption at home, and what are the implications of, of that? And that requires getting out of being totally driven by international market prices.

So if a government decides that actually, yes, we want to prioritize more homegrown, what has to change, do you think?

Well, at the moment, the majority of our land is used for production of, uh, animal source foods.

We Give relatively little land to horticulture, but yet when I was a boy, you know, most towns would've had some sort of market garden system.

And so incentivizing more horticulture, incentivizing more top fruit, that's our, our kind of real Achilles heel.

But before we get there, we have to get a bit deeper into the problems, right? Why do you think the food system, the current food system is so fragile? And what's likely to happen if we continue down this path?

Okay, I think it's fragility as a consequence.

So let's start at the beginning.

Our very highly complex socioeconomic system in which the food system is embedded is predicated primarily on economic growth driven by maximising consumption and minimising price, particularly associated with a whole range of things, including food.

So if you start off from the assumption that economic growth is the biggest shaper of the way our societies work, at least from a political perspective, and this is why... elections are increasingly fought on, will it make me richer or poorer kind of thinking, then anything that can maximise volume and minimise price maximises consumption, a good thing from a kind of socioeconomic perspective.

And when it pertains to food, getting you to eat a whole lot of stuff It's a good thing.

It puts money in people's pockets and pays for farmers and pays for food system actors and so on.

Maybe you could talk us through these three.