Britain’s food has been cheapened for decades. In the push to produce low-cost calories, farmers’ incomes have stagnated, a small number of companies now dominate Britain’s food chain, and immense costs to people’s health and nature have piled up. In a volatile world facing the effects of climate change and turbulent politics, the country’s long-term food security is at risk.

This is the second of two reports from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission seeking to provoke an honest conversation about food, money and power. In the first report, The False Economy of Big Food, Prof Tim Jackson estimated that unhealthy diets were costing the UK £268bn a year.

This report turns to the farmers and the food chain that keep Britain fed – and seeks to answer three simple questions. Why have farmers felt squeezed by the push for cheaper food at all costs? Why is this a problem? And what should be done?

The core recommendation is that the Westminster government’s forthcoming food and farming strategies should explicitly address the problem of cheapness.

• Healthy food needs to be affordable and available to everyone, but long-term downward pressure on food prices hasn’t achieved this and has come at a cost to people’s health, nature and the planet.
  
• Political leaders need to change the rules of the game, so that growing healthy, sustainably grown food in ways that build food security and resilience is properly rewarded.
  
• Financial returns need to flow to where real value is being created, to farmers that regenerate natural resources, to local communities, and to businesses selling healthy food.