Elizabeth Creak Distinguished Guest Lecture 2025
“Food security or food resilience? Unravelling the links, interests and challenges”
Tim Lang, Professor Emeritus of Food Policy, Centre for Food Policy, City St George’s, University of London
Tuesday 4th November 2025
Professor Lang's Abstract
The notion of resilience (the capacity to bounce back from shock) is being increasingly used in discussions of the UK food system yet the UK’s resilience planning system almost entirely ignores food. The default policy position appears to be that rich societies such as the UK are intrinsically food secure. Food follows the money. The UK is rich,ergoit is food secure. This lecture suggests that rethinks are needed for both security and resilience with regard to food. The National Risk Register gives only one food risk of 89 facing the country yet many analysts disagree pointing to internal and external tensions and potential disruptions such as: geopolitics, climate change, price inflation, uneven distribution of added value down supply chains, the ‘weaponisation’ of food (think Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza), health inequalities, and the fragilities of Just-in-Time logistics on which almost all food supply depends. How the public experiences disruptions can itself become a dynamic affecting the food system. If food is a trust relationship, what happens if the trust is stretched or even broken? The lecture suggests that the terms security and resilience might benefit from both some tightening and extending! In a report for the National Preparedness Commission (Just in Case, Feb 2025), I have explored where the public interest might lie in all this. The lecture will sketch the risks and vulnerabilities the UK public and consumers in rich societies face today, and the strategic options that lie ahead. It argues that policy makers are unlikely to be able to avoid facing what security and resilience might mean. As ever, public engagement will probably force the issues.
