If only the Ukraine war came to an end. If only energy prices dropped. If only Covid’s long tail finally dwindled away. Then, at last, food price inflation would be vanquished. It’s certainly true that if and when these things happen the rate at which food prices are increasing, currently at 5.9% and rising, should ease. It’s worth noting that there is also significant food price inflation across the EU right now. In Belgium it’s 5.3%, in Germany it’s 6.2% and in Greece it’s a whacking 8.1%.
So we’re the same as everywhere else. Except we’re not. For underlying all those short-term issues, is a much longer term systemic issue peculiar to the UK; one which this government seems determined to ignore. A decade ago, I was writing Greedy Man In A Hungry World, my book about food sustainability and whether it had much to do with middle-class obsessions with small-scale agriculture, organics and localism (spoiler: it doesn’t). I argued then that massive damage had been done to the UK’s agricultural base by the pursuit of cheap food by any means.
