Backcasting to Achieve Food Resilience in the UK (BAFR-UK)

Context

Our food systems are optimised for efficiency rather than resilience, putting them at risk of actual or apparent failure, especially due to the impacts of increasing geopolitical instability and climate change. If these combine, the result is likely to be beyond the current planning of most organisations, causing a step-change in food system vulnerability. We have previously forecast food system scenarios including potential tipping points, where consumers lack availability and access to food, leading to impacts on economic productivity and livelihoods through, for example, disease outbreak, extreme hunger or malnutrition, and civil unrest. Our motivation is to prioritise where in the food system we most urgently need to increase resilience.



The challenge

To increase resilience we need to better understand likely changes to UK primary production and across the supply chain, as well as distribution and access, gathering new data with stakeholders on their potential impacts. A set of pathways are required to test interventions that account for co-benefits and unintended consequences including environmental sustainability and human health. For example, the Environmental Audit Committee report on 'Environmental Change and Food Security' says that "It rang loud and clear throughout our inquiry that the Government and the food sector must focus on embedding more diversity of produce and farming methods within the food system, both to build resilience against the effects of environmental change and to reduce the food system's own impact on the planet".



Aims:

A1. We think outside-the-box to consider ways political and natural events could impact the UK and how these could lead to food system vulnerabilities.

A2. We identify interventions to mitigate food system vulnerability.

A3. We engage many food system stakeholders to improve the quality of project outputs while influencing stakeholder organisation risk strategy and, crucially, policy decisions based on the outputs are more likely to be seen as reasonable.

A4. We create an accessible food system model containing the quantitative impact of key intervention options on resilience, and consider potential co-benefits and trade-offs between food access, security, environment and health.



Objectives corresponding to each aim:

O1. We identify a prioritised set of representative pathways that cover the essential features of food system shocks and cascading risks including convergence points and the most concerning nodes.

O2. We produce a suite of intervention options which could divert the representative pathways to better outcomes to transform the system well before crises emerge.

O3. Food system stakeholders co-produce findings through consultation and contributions throughout the project.

O4. We combine pathways with intervention data to quantify the resilience, environment and nutritional impacts of transformation options and make this accessible to policymakers and beyond through an open-source dashboard.



Potential applications and benefits

The dashboard will be used by government and business to test interventions and policy recommendations. The recommended interventions from the PhD placements and the final policy recommendations will provide clear advice to business and government on building resilience in the food system.



Stakeholders & project partners

The following organisations are partners on this project bringing in their extensive network of stakeholders: AFN+, Better Food Traders, DEFRA, Food Ethics Council, Food Farming & Countryside Commission, Food Standards Agency, Institute of Grocery Distribution, Sustain, Trussell Trust, WRAP, WTW, WWF-UK.