Making food resilience a political priority in Wales: six catalytic actions

Food resilience action means delivering an answer to the question: how are we going to feed the 3.2 million people of Wales in the coming years?

There have been a string of highly visible threats to our food system in the last years – extreme weather, cybercrime and war. The UK Government has set a new agenda by launching a household food stockpiling initiative, the Be Ready Campaign. There is no visible end to these threats and the constant increase in food prices these drive.  This will adversely affect more and more people. We need to act.

There are two key opportunities to build on:

• The new Welsh Government is showing genuine commitment to changing the food system in Wales. It is developing a new Food Strategy. Can this include food resilience action at the scale required?
• Professor Tim Lang, in his Just in Case report, has produced the most comprehensive definition of food resilience action so far seen in UK – at national, city/county, community and household levels. This provides a solid foundation for immediate action.

Our Food Trust, which has been advocating persistently for food resilience action for nearly three years, proposes six actions to fire up a response in Wales to the frightening escalation of food prices and food supply threats. Even the UK Government is now advocating stockpiling. Stockpiling, however, is a devolved responsibility and is only a last resort in an adequate food resilience strategy.

The six actions we are advocating are:

1. The First Minister to lead the food resilience agenda.

Resilience planning is the responsibility of the First Minister of Wales. The four regional Resilience Forums in Wales answer directly to him. Currently food is not mentioned in the Government’s 78-page resilience strategy (written by the previous Government).

2. A cross-sectoral Food Resilience Taskforce to plan action in Wales.

Wales needs a body that holds the food security issue within the political process and bridges four silos – farming, sustainable food, economic development, and action on poverty. These four sectors have not met to discuss food since the meeting on food security in Cardiff in April 2024. The core functions of the Taskforce need to be (1) make recommendations for changes in national and local government policy; (2) agree, develop and initiate flagship food security actions in Wales, (3) raise awareness about food security action across Welsh society, promoting existing effective, scalable actions, and (4) contribute substantially to all-UK food security initiatives.

3. Every elected representative in Wales to be briefed about food resilience action.

Food resilience requires an all-of-society approach – action by Welsh Government, local Government, communities and households. Every elected representative in Wales needs to be introduced to what food resilience action looks like.

4. The launch of a national mission to ‘feed the cities’.

Cities, where most people live, are where the food resilience challenges will be greatest. Cities need to secure their food supply by diversifying away from the current extreme dependence on nine supermarkets. Cities can facilitate demand for locally and regionally grown food, not just through procurement, so providing the foundation for farms in surrounding rural areas to develop new enterprises growing more food for nearby markets. (In France, cities have a legal responsibility to do this.)

5. The launch of a national mission to ‘grow more food’ for Wales.

A foundation of food resilience is diversifying food supply, with much more food grown locally and regionally. There are two ways to do this: diversification on existing farms at a grand scale and building hundreds of new “affordable farms” for a new generation of young farmers. Minette Batters, former President of the National Farmers Union, has said the UK needs the biggest revolution in farming in its history.

6. The launch of a national mission to make decent food affordable and accessible to low-income households.

Owing to profound economic inequality in Wales, many people (we estimate one million, subject to further analysis) do not have access to decent food. This requires a specific new national strategy building on the experience of multiple small-scale projects across the country, but scaling up substantially.

What Our Food Trust is doing to kick-start action

Our Food Trust is not just advocating these actions. We are working to kick-start all of them. We believe that making a start is the best way to inspire a response and to enable a flying start once food resilience inevitably makes it onto the political agenda in Wales.

We have been promoting food resilience action in Wales since April 2024.

• The first debate on food security in Cardiff in April 2024, where Tim Lang, the Future Generations Commissioner and the Minister for Farming spoke. This achieved a unique degree of participation across sectors – farming, sustainable food, economic development, social justice.
• A website, FoodSecurityAction.org, setting out what Tim Lang recommended in his Just in Case report. This includes ten national security actions, seven actions for county and city councils, eight actions for communities and five actions for households.
• A series of articles in the Welsh media: We need to grow more food in Wales (March 2025), How will Wales feed itself when the supermarkets fail? (March 2026), Food Security in Wales: we must act now (October 2026, with Professors Tim Land and Terry Marsden). A fourth is about to be published, The UK wants us to stockpile, but Wales needs a whole new kitchen.

1. The First Minister to lead the food resilience agenda

We are publishing an article in Wales on food stockpiling, an issue recently raised by the UK Government, but which is a devolved responsibility.

We are writing to the First Minister to ask him to lead resilience planning in Wales, including advice to households and community/regional stockpiling.

We are going to invite the First Minister to a food resilience meeting (see next action).

2. A cross-sectoral Food Resilience Taskforce to plan action in Wales

We are organising another cross-sectoral meeting (farming, sustainable food, economic development, poverty) at the Senedd, as happened in April 2024, again with the Future Generations Commissioner. This time, a smaller roundtable focusing on strategic action, with an invitation to the First Minister to attend.

3. Every elected representative in Wales to be briefed about food resilience action

Using the actions proposed by Tim Lang, as set out in FoodSecurityAction.org, we are organising a briefing to all Members of Senedd, all city and county councillors (after the May 2027 elections) and all community councils in Wales.

4. The launch of a national mission to ‘feed the cities’

We are organising a conversation between Welsh cities and Birmingham City, which has a strategy to source more food from its rural hinterlands.

We will organise an event for city authority leaders at the next Welsh Local Government Association conference (Llandudno, November 2027).

5. The launch of a national mission to ‘grow more food’ for Wales

The main practical activity of Our Food Trust is to build more affordable farms and use them to demonstrate how current Government policy prevents scale.

We are also developing diversification packages into veg growing for farmers based on the highly successful method to expand intensive poultry units and will be discussing how Welsh Government can support this.

We are launching an advocacy campaign with young farmers to raise awareness of the barriers they face, particularly in relation to housing, and make the case for a major national programme of affordable farm building.

6. The launch of a national mission to make decent food affordable and accessible to low-income households

We are organising a roundtable on food and poverty with the Bevan Foundation and ClwydAlyn Housing Association, to set the agenda for scaling up food security action within the poverty sector.