
‘We are in serious trouble’: The other crisis – our food supply - Kaibeezy
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/22/tim-lang-interview-professor-of-food-policy-city-university-supply-chain-crisis
======
piker
Seems opportunistic and unrelated to the current pandemic. The author is
discussing things such as food being "the biggest driver of NHS spending as a
result of obesity, diabetes and heart disease." And food's "unsustainable
costs elsewhere". Title is borderline irresponsible at a time like this.

~~~
Kaibeezy
Could just be timing. It's an interview tied to a book release. Presumably
he's been writing it for a while, studying the issue long before that. He
could have meant we were in "serious trouble" even without a pandemic.

I had to talk my elderly dad down from attempting to mow the lawn for a while.
A hospital overloaded with pulmonary distress that also has to deal with you
cutting off a toe will put you _and_ the virus patients at much higher risk
than normal.

I go multiple directions with your concern about the title. On one hand, as
another comment pointed out, there's a troubling sense that it's using panic
to sell clicks. On the other hand, if it's a real issue in-and-of-itself, then
it's a real issue people should know about.

On the gripping hand, if it helps join up two separate problems in our minds
_now_ rather than us only noticing once it is already well underway, that's
got to be a plus. Climate is another one that has this quality in this moment,
or at least pollution. I'm thinking about the nitrogen dioxide over China data
visualizations
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634955)

------
Kaibeezy
_the big food companies were briefing the government about just how fragile
the food supply chain is_

Article is specifically about the UK situation. Anyone know the status
elsewhere? I’d guess it generally varies from somewhat better in low density
countries to a lot worse in highly urbanized countries, but with exceptions
where the supply has been diversified.

~~~
paganel
> Anyone know the status elsewhere?

Don't have the exact link right now but I remember reading an Italian
newspaper article a few days ago saying that Italian agriculture is going to
be massively impacted by the fact that approximately 300,000 East-European
workers had returned to their countries because of the virus.

I actually found something similar, it's this article [1] (in Italian) which
is in fact an interview with an Italian agricultural "imprenditore", where he
says that there usually are 370,000 seasonal foreign workers working in
Italian agriculture, that's 27%. One can imagine that many of them have by now
returned to their countries of origin with no possibility of easy return.

[1] [https://it.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-lagricoltura-
ital...](https://it.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-lagricoltura-italiana-
rischia-il-collasso-prandini-coldiretti-non-abbiamo-abbastanza-lavoratori-
stagionali/)

------
pjc50
Yes, the UK isn't self-sufficient in food and cannot be. Much of the animal
pasture land is unsuitable for arable farming (e.g. the few remaining sheep
herds on the Yorkshire Dales). That isn't a problem _if_ we remain open to the
world economy..

------
AdrianB1
The second propaganda article from The Guardian today; it makes an analysis on
the food supply and it throws social inequality for a good measure - is social
inequality driving food production? Really?

What is next, Pravda articles? Russia Today?

~~~
flr03
If people have less and less money in average to spend on food, it is
obviously going to impact the production. All the production/delivery chain
will try to pull down the costs and, as a consequence, the quality all
together.

~~~
AdrianB1
No matter how much income inequality people have, the production is meeting an
aggregate market need where the very few rich people have no significant
impact. If all the rich people would disappear, the food market would not
change a bit, so why throw inequality in the analysis?

Yes, if everyone would be rich the situation would be different, but a world
of all rich people is a matter of purchase power and inflation, it will never
exist, the million dollar will be the new thousand dollar.

