Food shortages caused by extreme weather could lead to civil unrest in the UK, according to a new study which has surveyed some of the country’s leading food experts.
When I saw this headline yesterday, it included “in the next 50 years”.
Sure enough:
Just over 40% of the food experts surveyed believe that civil unrest in the UK in the next 10 years was either possible (38%) or more likely than not (3%). Over the next 50 years, this increased to nearly 80% of experts believing civil unrest was either possible (45%), more likely than not (24%), or very likely (10%).
The participants were then asked, if disruption to the food system was to cause the unrest, was it likely to be due to not enough food being available overall, or problems with food distribution, preventing it getting to the right places and creating isolated pockets of hunger. They were asked to consider both questions over the two time frames, 10 and 50 years.
The results show that 80% of experts believe logistical distribution issues leading to shortages are the most likely food-related cause of civil unrest in the next 10 years. But, considered over a 50-year horizon, they said catastrophic failure resulting in insufficient food to feed the UK population, rather than distribution problems, would be the most likely cause.
When I saw this headline yesterday, it included “in the next 50 years”.
Sure enough: