The UK has not been self-sufficient in food and drink production for hundreds of years. The first foreign outposts, trading companies and colonies were almost all established to provide the UK with imported agricultural goods – whether sugar, silk, spices, tobacco, cotton, tea, coffee, timber, wine from Boudreaux or port from Portugal.

To go back to precolonial food self-sufficiency would also require either a massive decrease in the UK’s population or a massive increase in UK farm productivity. The latter is possible to some degree. The rest of the world has increased its farm productivity and lowered its pesticide use with higher yielding, disease resistant crop varieties, developed using genetic modification or genetic editing. The use of both gene modified, and gene edited crops on UK farms was obstructed by EU regulations.

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If the UK wants to improve its food security, its best option would be to expand and diversify its supply chains. Trade is of huge benefit to consumers, it not only allows us to eat products that are not grown in the UK or are out of season, it also allows us to import the parts of the animal we prefer to eat and leave the rest for other customers.

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