ReRoot Food morsels

by Anne MacLennan

ReRoot is about Working together to create a more connected, healthy, sustainable and resilient  food economy in Broadford and beyond. Here are some reasons that this is important.

Health and prosperity
Two major reports published in October and November address our broken and unhealthy food system:
From the House of Lords unhealthy diets and obesity are considered to be unintended costs of the commercial food sector.  ‘Unhealthy processed foods are more profitable for business than healthy foods because in the main they are cheap to produce, sell in large volumes, have long shelf lives and are highly palatable.’ Ultra-processed foods now make up 57% of the UK adult diet, 66% for adolescents and this is forecast to increase. Chronic diet-related disease is found across all income groups, but especially in low income households. The Lords’ 2020 report, Hungry for Change rated our food system as a fail. Lamenting the previous UK Government’s failure to act decisively on many of those recommendations, the 2024 report calls for urgent Government leadership to change the food system.

The False Economy of Big Food estimated a current annual spend of £286 billion to address direct and indirect health and social consequences of an unhealthy national diet. That includes NHS management and loss of economic activity due to diet-related disease. They then calculated how much it would cost for everyone to eat healthily. Average households would pay a bit more, but the national bill for a healthy diet would be far less than the current true cost of our unhealthy diet. So, there would be plenty left in the kitty to help out those who struggle to afford good food and fewer people would be excluded from the workforce due to chronic illness, which would boost their income and the economy. Thus ‘there is a clear and urgent economic case for transforming the UK food system.

Food resilience
Our food security depends on strong domestic production, complemented by imports. Risks to this security have risen in recent years due to increased international volatility, climate change and biodiversity loss.

Domestic production is being damaged by climate change. Last winter, rainfall in parts of the UK was double the 1991-2020 average. Excess rain has washed away some crops, delayed planting and rotted this year’s potato crop in places. Heatwaves and storms have also battered food production.


Photo: Flooded winter cereal by Richard Humphrey

Nearly half of our food is imported, so we are vulnerable if those providers have problems. Spain suppies about 32% of the UK’s fruit and veg imports, including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuces, broccoli and citrus fruit. Spanish agriculture was suffering from drought before the recent dreadful floods destroyed crops as well as fields, orchards and greenhouses, with long term consequences. While catastrophic for the region it will also impact our supplies and put pressure on local production.

A resilient food system is better able to cope with shocks to food security, whether from climate, pandemic or price escalation. Diverse, small-scale production is more adaptable. A connected community is mutually supportive and shares resources to be sustainable. That’s all part of resilience and the ReRoot plan!

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