Enhancing transformative resilience of fruit and vegetable provision for UK citizens

Fruit and vegetables (F&V) are essential components of a healthy diet, but the resilience of their provision to UK citizens over coming years is at high risk. We have a 'just-in-time' lean inventory and delivery system with high import dependency that is increasingly vulnerable to supply chain disruption. There are threats to domestic production such as climate change, labour disruption and pollinator loss. We also currently rely extensively on imports, and both offshore and domestic horticultural production are susceptible to a range of complex cascading risks spanning political, economic, social, technological, legal/regulatory, climate and environmental domains. This project will address such risks that cascade across these domains by building on a track record of innovation in systemic risk analysis methodologies, enabling us to identify risk cascades and appropriate interventions to build resilience. Crucially, we link our 'big-picture' systems thinking approach to detailed quantitative analysis of risks to the financing, production, supply and consumption of fruit and vegetables to UK citizens to inform the most appropriate and effective combination of interventions.

We will harness new analysis approaches using a hierarchy of methods, from participatory systems mapping to financial, mathematical and econometric modelling, working closely with government (Defra and Food Standards Agency) and major industry partners (Asda, Barfoots and British Retail consortium) who have expressed strong interest and need for this research. Our co-development approach will allow us to address the following objectives: a) assess resilience both of the current F&V system and several scenarios of future possible states (e.g. greater domestic production versus imports, scenarios of more vertical farming versus field-based etc.); b) analyse the resilience of transformation pathways both in terms of systemic risks they are exposed to and the transition risks they generate; c) identify potential resilience-building interventions, in order to find 'win-win' interventions that protect against short term shocks, but do not lock food systems into non-ideal states in the longer term (i.e. avoiding building in 'undesirable' resilience).

This work is genuinely interdisciplinary with experts from mathematics, agriculture, finance and economics working together through an integrated systems approach. This disciplinary integration will be undertaken in concert with a transdisciplinary approach, involving continuing dialogue with key policy and industry partners in problem formulation, scenario development and the design of interventions to build resilience. This makes our ambitious outcomes achievable, namely that we will: i) co-design new interventions with major industry partners to ensure reliable access to affordable, sufficient and nutritious F&V, ii) inform UK trade and agricultural policy to long term resilience, and iii) help inform F&V sector transformation through working with trade association partners. Hence, our project is a timely and critical investment that will lead to genuine improvement in the resilience of UK fruit and vegetable provision for UK citizens.