The government must know full well that many people have neither the space nor the money to store extra food in their homes. It is individuating responsibility for a collective problem. As usual, it is the poorest and most excluded who will suffer from it. 🧵
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Minister tells Brits to stock ...
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It underplays the scale of potential shocks to our food supply, which could include systemic failure. Good luck surviving on what the minister calls "a bit of food that can keep you going for a while before the emergency services can get to you" in that situation. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The banks collapsed in 2008 – ...
It fails to recognise that individualised stockpiling ahead of a major shortfall creates a monstrous inequality of outcomes. Some families would be fine, as long as they can protect their stores from looters. Most would not. Social breakdown would happen in days. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Britain’s food supply is preca...
While a range of responses to the threat of short-term or long-term disruptions to our food supply is necessary, I've come to believe that government stockpiles, following the Swiss model, are an essential component of resilience. But ministers don't want to know. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Britain's scorched fields mean...
I want to emphasise, because I don't think anyone in government has ever mentioned it in public, that this isn't just about shortfalls and supply glitches. The food system is highly vulnerable to the kind of collapse that almost toppled the financial system in 2008. www.monbiot.com/2023/03/09/t...
The Hunger Gap
Governments rescued the financial system by issuing future money (quantitative easing). They cannot rescue the food system if it starts to collapse by issuing future food. No one in government seems to have grasped what this means. A horror beyond contemplation, which could happen at any moment.
Many things need to be done to avert this possibility *before* it happens. I list some of them in the Hunger Gap presentation linked in this thread. Government stockpiling is one of them. Crucially, it also gives us some breathing space as we to try to rebuild a collapsed system. Otherwise ...
I think I managed to persuade some MPs that we've been missing the bigger picture, in this presentation to Parliament. But it doesn't seem to have filtered through to government. It feels intensely frustrating, seeing something that ministers can't and won't. www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/...
Parliamentlive.tv
Instead, not only does the government individuate responsibility for a systemic problem, but successive governments have also privatised the response. They've relied on supermarket warehousing to fill any gaps. But the supermarkets don't do that any more. They've switched from stocks to flows.
