www.tanstaafl.co.uk

The BBC reports that there’s a report published today about the decline in the “health” of the natural world having the potential to affect the UK’s national security. Here.

What concerns me is the quote from DEFRA near the end of the article:

“The UK has a resilient food system and remains one of the most food-secure nations in the world.

We have access through international trade to food products that cannot be produced here, which supplements domestic production and ensures that any disruption from risks such as adverse weather or disease do not affect the UK’s overall security of supply.”

Right up to the point where, for whatever reason, those international suppliers either can’t, or won’t, to supply that food to us?

If it’s coffee or tea for example, I’m sure we’d learn to live without it though it might not be very much fun. Wheat, barley and oats we are largely self-sufficient in. In the case of vegetables however, it appears that the UK only grows 55% of its consumption. And fruit? A mere 15%. If the overseas supply of those were cut off, we might well become a nation of scurvy (and very hungry) knaves.

The quote seems quite odd in another respect. They claim that internationally-sourced products that we can’t produce ourselves supplement our own production. To my way of thinking that means there’s no overlap (we can’t produce those products). But then they claim that this will ensure our overall security in the event of disruption?