Resilience of the food supply chain to disruptions

The food supply chain covers all stages from food production to consumption and includes agriculture, manufacturing, storage and distribution, wholesale, retail and catering. It is complex and highly interconnected, with goods often moving through multiple stages and locations before reaching consumers.

The system is primarily industry‑led, and businesses are responsible for managing their own operations and resilience to disruptions.

The government has designated food as one of 13 Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) sectors that it considers essential to the country’s functioning. However, the food supply chain faces a wide range of risks that can cause disruption. These include ‘acute risks’ – events requiring an emergency response – such as extreme weather, cyber-attacks, energy disruptions and animal, plant or human disease outbreaks.

It also faces longer-term ‘chronic risks’ such as climate change, which can gradually erode resilience over time. Risks can be interrelated and may trigger or exacerbate other risks. For example, climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events.

Disruption to food supply can lead to food price inflation, less consumer choice, and vulnerable people struggling to access food, which can worsen issues such as food poverty and the health effects of poor diet. It can also increase operating costs and disrupt operations for businesses, and lead to significant costs for the government.

The government’s National Risk Register highlights several risks that, while considered low in likelihood, could cause catastrophic disruption (the highest impact category) if they occurred, and result in food shortages because of a failure of the food supply chain. Examples of these risks include a national power outage, pandemic, nuclear accident, or large-scale chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack.