Results of a Survey of UK Farmers on Food System Vulnerability over the Short and Long Term
Jones, A., Bridle, S., Falloon, P. , Fredenburgh, J. & Reynolds, C. 
ORCID: 0000-0002-1073-7394 (2024).
Results of a Survey of UK Farmers on Food System Vulnerability over the Short and Long Term.
Sustainability, 16(16),
article number 6851.
doi: 10.3390/su16166851
Abstract
We report the results of a survey of farmers and landowners to identify the most likely potential food system disruption scenarios for the UK and compare these with a previous expert elicitation with a much wider set of food system stakeholders. We found that 60% of farmers think a Societal Event in which 1 in 2000 people are injured in the UK is at least 20% likely to occur over the coming decade. Over a timeframe of 50 years, this increased to almost 90% of farmers. These results show that farmers and landowners are considerably more concerned about the vulnerability of the food system in the UK than the wider group of food system experts are. Farmers agreed with experts on the majority of potential causes of such vulnerability, which are climate change, trade policies (import and export), competition for land and ecological collapse (over 50 years). However, they also highlighted the importance of the power structure within the food system, with large corporations supplying to, or buying from, farmers creating lower revenue, making farming an unsustainable business. We conclude that an urgent systematic review of potential interventions that would improve resilience be conducted by the UK Government, in partnership with farmers.
| Publication Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Publisher Keywords: | ood systems; global catastrophic risk; climate change; extreme weather; scenarios; cascading risks |
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine |
| Departments: | School of Health & Psychological Sciences School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Healthcare Services Research & Management |
| SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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