Andrew Simms (Tescopoly) has written an excellent commentary in The Guardian about the fragility of global supply chains: about how Britain can no longer power and heat itself without using energy imports, and how dependent we are upon other nations for our food supply.

Looking back to the fuel protests of 2000, which I remember well as I watched them from a slight dislocate by means of a foreign hotel’s TV, he explains the seriousness of the situation. It was apparently much worse than any of us thought:

This year is the 10th anniversary of the fuel protests, when supermarket bosses sat with ministers and civil servants in Whitehall warning that there were just three days of food left. We were, in effect, nine meals from anarchy. Suddenly, the apocalyptic visions of novelists and film-makers seemed less preposterous. Civilisation’s veneer may be much thinner than we like to think. (Source: Nine Meals from Anarchy, Guardian)

What would have happened if it had come to that: no more food for the nation?

I know that our little plot in the back garden would be far from sufficient to feed us through the slim months – particularly in winter. Right now we only have potatoes in bags and parsnips in the ground, both of which have probably been ruined by weeks of snow and ice.

The chickens? Well, they’re giving us roughly an egg a day. It’s a long time since we’ve had a day of three (or even two, come to that) and one egg between two grown adults doesn’t go a long way. That leaves what we have in the freezer, what we’ve preserved from last summer’s harvest, and the pantry.

If this isn’t proof positive that Britain needs to get growing again, I don’t know what is. We have lost our Blitz spirit, and we no longer work the land, because it’s easier to import pineapples from the Maldives and grapes from the Middle East than to hoe a trench for carrots and keep butterflies off our home-grown sprouts. Surely that’s wrong.

Seasonal eating is now the exception, not the rule. So is growing your own. With troubled times ahead, those two approaches are dangerous folly.

It seems almost unthinkable that your local supermarket should run out of food, but what if it did. Could you cope?

Related posts:

1. Food miles to be cut short?
2. Oily food
3. Food deflation