The UK is heading into a second food price spike inside four years. Industry now expects food inflation to reach at least 9% by the end of 2026, driven by Middle East energy disruption layered onto persistent climate pressures on farmers and growers. The Food Foundation’s Basic Basket is already 30% more expensive than in April 2022.

Following today’s cabinet meeting, we are urging government to learn the right lessons of 2022. Food insecurity more than doubled in twelve months as prices rose and pandemic-era support was withdrawn.

A 9% food inflation spike would entrench severe food insecurity in hundreds of thousands of additional households, costing the NHS, schools and councils more in three years than acting now would cost in one. Meanwhile, farmers and growers are watching their costs spiral and revising their plans, compounding risk.

For Treasury, a timely and targeted response invests public spending towards social and economic resilience and saves money over the next three years. And we know it’s what citizens expect from their government.

There’s now plenty of evidence about what works. We’ll be publishing policy proposals over the course of this week, curated from years of inquiry and analysis between partners, tested with citizens, bringing together different perspectives with the bold and creative thinking the times demand of us.

Policies like these - things government could tee up right now:

1. Protect the most vulnerable with an emergency uplift to Universal Credit, expanded school meals and Healthy Start
   
   
2. Target support to farmers and growers transitioning to more sustainable systems, through front-loading SFI26 and emergency bridging payments
   
   
3. Invest through public procurement contracts designed for the food system we want, stabilising prices for British producers and improving public sector menus alike

What they will all add up to is a coherent strategy for long term food system resilience, on a par with the energy transition, informed by a balanced basket of data rather than political weather or the loudest lobbyists.

But the real test of policy in this moment is not only what it prevents. It is what it builds. The instinct in a price shock is to shore up the existing system. Yet this food system is built on a fragile model of cheap calories from a narrow base of commodity crops, processed by a handful of multinationals, dependent on fossil fuel inputs, into unhealthy foods, creating profits that flow out of the UK economy. UK primary producers – farmers and growers – hold too much of the risk. That system is exactly what is failing now: it is climate-exposed, geopolitically fragile, economically unjust, and producing the diet-related ill health that costs the UK economy £268 billion a year.

The job of government now is not to ‘bounce back’ from yet another crisis, but to ‘bounce forward’ to a more resilient future. Every emergency lever should be designed to support the farmers, growers, communities and food businesses building the secure and sustainable systems we need, not subsidise the ones we are trying to leave behind.

Food price shocks are now a feature of the system we live in, not a rare event. The UK needs an emergency response for food resilience, informed by those leading the transition, not those protecting business as usual. Government must bring ambition and courage to this moment, backing all those who are already building a fairer, healthier, more resilient system. The choice now is whether intervention shores up the system that is failing us or accelerates the transition to the food and farming we need.