In 2022, the UK imported around half its food from overseas. Just over a quarter of UK food imports came from the Mediterranean region, most of which was staple fresh produce like fruit and vegetables.

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has released a report, Climate Impacts on Food Imports, on the growing threat from the impact of climate change that could cause this imbalance to have dramatic effects. Spain alone, which is experiencing some of the worst climate impacts in the region, accounted for 7 per cent of the UK’s food imports.

Climate change is driving more extreme weather, including hotter, longer and more frequent heatwaves. Extreme heat, along with resulting drought, wildfires and subsequent flooding when rain comes, destroys crops and degrades agriculture.

Europe saw its hottest summer in 2022; extreme heat that led to widespread drought which harmed food harvests. 2023 has seen the world’s hottest June on record; a succession of the hottest days ever recorded; the hottest sea surface temperatures and, in July, the hottest month ever experienced by modern humans.

Even if the world succeeds in keeping temperature rises to 1.5C, food producers in the UK, and worldwide, already face the need to adapt to these new climate extremes of higher average temperatures than humans have been used to for most of our existence on Earth.

All of these can harm UK crop yields, as 2022’s drought did most recently, adding to the pressure which high energy prices have had on pushing down or delaying planting – particularly of crops which rely on energy, or fertiliser, intensive growing methods.

The report concludes that, other than attempting to reign in climate change, the solutions are around adaptation of traditional UK crops to other types (genetic modification might be one example, other natural crops another) a move to different farming methods (for example vertical farming, although replacing a shortfall in imported crops might require investment in energy- and cost-intensive growing environments, like polytunnels and glasshouses) or alternative sourcing (but with potential longer supply chains and with that greater uncertainty and potential emissions). Alternative sourcing might, also, deprive poorer nations of foodstuffs.

Of more immediate action, the report considers:
• Incorporating trees and shrubbery into crop and livestock farming systems, to manage flooding, provide shade, improve soils, sequester carbon, and foster biodiversity.
• Managing longer-term soil health through organic fertilisers, diversity in crop rotations reducing movement and disturbance of soil, and using nutrient management plans to lock nitrogen into soils.
• Sustainable water management through re-wetting land, buffering water-courses by introducing woodland alongside them, and protecting them from run-off from fertiliser used on neighbouring land.

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