Potential pathways to acute food systems crisis in the UK

Bridle, Sarah, Smith, Elta, Jones, Aled, Pilley, Vanessa, Hasnain, Saher, Stanbrough, Lucy, Vogel, Christina, Douglas, Caitlin, Doherty, Bob, Tovey, Philip, Smith, Pete, Pearson, Simon, Beard, S.J, Ward, Neil, Crossley, Dan, Godfray, H. Charles J., Zurek, Monika, Pierce, Julie, Watters, Dominic, Natalini, Davide, Benton, Tim G., Bhunnoo, Riaz, Dare, Ben, Cordero, Juan Pablo, Watson, Molly, Coupe, Barnaby, Batchelar, Judith, Taylor, Ella, Ingram, John R., Irons, June, Lang, Tim, Macmillan, Tom, Morton, Daniel, Pritchard, Sue, Sanderson Bellamy, Angelina, Sindlinger, Eike, Taylor, Alec and Whiteside, Kerry (2026) Potential pathways to acute food systems crisis in the UK. Sustainability, 18 (3). pp. 1-26. ISSN 2071-1050

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Abstract

There is increasing concern in many advanced economies about the risks of disruption and crises in agri-food systems. Government departments and non-governmental organisations are working to identify and understand specific risks but struggle to take broad, holistic perspectives and therefore underestimate the potential for civil unrest. In the interests of helping move from understanding to action, we convened a group of experts through a Delphi process to map out potential pathways to acute UK food system crises and identify interventions that would build resilience and sustainability. To this end, we consulted 31 experts, carrying out 15 expert interviews, followed by three surveys and two workshops with a further 16 experts. The experts highlighted the many existing chronic issues creating a tinderbox for an acute risk to lead to a food crisis in the UK. These chronic issues include climate change, poor policy implementation, rising inequality, food supply chain consolidation and the risks from just-in-time supply of food. They voted to include three acute triggers—(a) cyber-attack, (b) a major extreme weather event and (c) a major new international conflict—and described how any combination of these could lead to (d) a UK food availability and/or price shock that could result in widespread fear of unsafe or inadequate food, leading to violence. A total of 7 system-wide interventions were prioritised to help address these pathway elements together and build sustainability, and a further 21 were identified to address elements individually.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/supplementary materials. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	cascading risks,climate change,ecological collapse,extreme weather,food systems,global catastrophic risk,scenarios,computer science (miscellaneous),geography, planning and development,renewable energy, sustainability and the environment,environmental science (miscellaneous),energy engineering and power technology,hardware and architecture,computer networks and communications,management, monitoring, policy and law,sdg 2 - zero hunger,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1700/1701
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	18 May 2026 15:18
Last Modified:	19 May 2026 08:52
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103077
DOI:	10.3390/su18031342

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