PK in The National: A cupboard full of baked beans isn't the way to prepare for a food emergency
A resilient food culture doesn't hoard, it weaves together knowledge, relationships, resources and agency
This is a fully-research-linked, mildly updated version of my weekly column in The National, published Saturday, 29th March, 2025
IT’S a spartan larder list: “25kg of rice, 15kg of dried chickpeas, 15kg of bread flour, 7kg of chapati flour, 5kg of oats, six litres of vegetable oil, a slab of tinned tomatoes, some nuts and dried fruit …”
This, plus the vegetables he grows on his family’s property, is the survival stockpile that stalwart environmentalist George Monbiot has packed away. It’s enough for two months.
Provoked by who? And after that, what? If you think this is just Disasterpants Monbiot over-reacting again, you might pay attention to the European Commission.
Midweek, the EC recommended every European citizen should store three days of essential supplies in their homes. These will help them to be ready “for catastrophic floods and fires, pandemics and military attacks […] affecting one or more member states.”
Ulp. Gulp. If we are indeed facing such apocalyptic horsemen, I’d rather push the slider in the eco-radical’s direction.
But it’s an emotional dilemma. Will it feel resilient and reassuring to find cupboard space for 50 tins of baked beans? Or more like a sad concession to the general freak-out?
Yet as lorries thunder their just-in-time deliveries past my Leith window, depositing cartons of mango slices at the end of preposterously long and delicate supply chains… Is the status quo really an option any more?
So let’s try to assess judiciously, as best we can, the dangers that might compel us to start stockpiling those dried chickpeas.
As is his wont, Monbiot presses his case with choice selections of evidence. Start with that oversupply of oranges - Trump, that is. His antics over canals, territories and tariffs could set off a cascade of disruptions over key commodities like wheat, rice, maize and soya beans – all of which the US is a super-exporter.
What if Trump provokes cyber or terror attacks on key infrastructure points for the passage of food trade, such as Panama? At a deeper level, holds Monbiot, the global food system is beginning to “flicker” in its outputs, similar to behaviours the world financial system displayed running up to 2008.
If we have a “whiplash effect” – where temperate weather is replaced by cycles of floods and droughts – and this happens, in sync, at key growing regions … our food supplies are in real trouble.
Yet we immediately come to the capability question. Who exactly should be stockpiling – ourselves as individuals and families, or our governments and national administrations?
The veteran food academic Tim Lang, who recently conducted a UK commission on food security, says that “just telling the public to store food is ridiculous … it’s a fantasy to think that everyone can look after themselves”.
As far as the experts know, Switzerland has a comprehensive national reserve of food lasting 12 months. China, Japan and Norway have increased their grain reserve – which they sometimes selectively flood into markets to reduce prices.
The administrations on these islands are tight-lipped about even the existence of national food supplies in reserve, citing “national security” to Monbiot’s inquiries. (The last time he asked a government minister – Boris Johnson – the answer was a harrumphed “No”).
As one logistics executive quipped to Lang, because of 50 years of pursuing lean efficiency: “The only storage is what’s on the motorway in delivery lorries. Just-in-time management hates storage.”
So there should be an alternative to either 1) stacking up the long-life milk in our cupboards, while adopting a posture of mild despair. Or 2) waiting for our administrative states (devolved or national) to assume their proper responsibilities to ensure our security.
That suggests, in the meantime, that our communities and localities step up. And that gets us into the (literally) more fruitful area of how local food production can support and strengthen our resilience to future supply shocks.
Lang notes a great Scottish example, Edible Estates in Edinburgh. It agriculturally develops green fields that sit around the city’s housing estates and encourages locals to consume their produce as an alternative to the major retailers.
Of course, if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a Scottish Government “Local Food Plan”. It cites Shetland Council’s primary reliance on local food producers for its school and office meals.
Many of you will remember Mike Small’s Fife Diet project from the mid-2000s. It was sparked by his realisation that prawns harvested in Scotland were being sent to Taiwan for processing, then sent back here for selling – a round-trip of 12,000 miles.
“Eating locally was the hook, but the longer-term goal was to explore the food system”, Mike said a few years ago. “The tagline was there is something fundamentally wrong with our food system, but there is something we can do about it.”
But we’re in a darker phase of history at the moment. The “locavore” restaurants, or the artisan bread baked with local seeds are now readily available (Leith is a showcase for all these kinds of initiatives).
However, the fundamental “food system” is barely changed. Are we just waiting for its downfall, in an era of widely-predicted eco-shocks?
We shouldn’t wait – we should prefigure different food futures. And we should start at the level of neighbourhoods, commons, and complex communities.
Resilience shouldn’t mean a bunker mentality – more like a convivial capacity.
A resilient food culture doesn’t hoard, it weaves together knowledge, relationships, resources and agency.
Let’s begin with local food mapping. (All of the foregoing are ideas circulating around our www.spring.site project). Every community could run participatory audits – what land is underused or sealed off through neglect?
Where are the school kitchens, empty plots, shared toolsheds or unused rooftops?
Through assemblies, surveys, and digital platforms, people could build “food resilience maps” of their own place. These could be used by everyone from permaculturists to planners, pensioners to pupils.
From there, we could launch community-supported growing circles. These could be modest, distributed clusters of neighbours committing to grow or cook together, based on shared calendars and matching skills.
These needn’t be full-blown allotments or farms (though they may grow into them). Instead, they’re more like micro-networks – democratising food literacy, promoting seasonal, co-operative practice.
This approach would also foster spaces where we deliberate about our food. Pop-up forums, citizen kitchens, and super-local assemblies, where people grapple with the ethics, logistics and culture of what they eat.
What is it to be sovereign over your diet and palate? What are our survival crops – or our celebration foods? As we grow, trade, share and compost, what are the elemental stories we are telling ourselves?
There is always a role for an enabling local and national government in Scotland –if it can be visionary about pushing powers down to the levels where it’s most effective.
What is the public agency that could offer funding, land access or tax relief to such projects, ones that actively shorten supply chains, support ecological farming, and enhance community wellbeing? Resilience should be rewarding, not punishing.
One project might be deliberative food tech. Can we prototype apps and platforms that don’t just deliver groceries or ready meals? They could also connect citizens to nearby growers, offer regenerative recipes, organise communal bulk-buying.
Maybe even visualise the carbon, labour and water costs of different food choices (the original claim of the Fife Diet).
In short, there’s an opportunity for democratic and social innovation around what would seem like the dour business of food resilience. We can strengthen ourselves, in spite of the strongmen.
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