Eat This Newsletter 298: Unprepared

Hello

National food self-sufficiency is probably not worth fighting for, but a little more resilience would be. Also, as ever, some prognostications and some reminiscences.

War on Food Insecurity

It didn’t take long for all kinds of experts to remind us that in more normal times some vast proportion — the estimates vary so much I’m not going to repeat any one of them — of the raw materials on which intensive agriculture depends flows through the Straits of Hormuz. And that shines a light on a different aspect of food security: the ability of a country to feed its people in the face of large external shocks.

Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City St. George’s, University of London, has long been concerned with the resilience of food systems, and his 2025 report on UK food resilience and assorted other events offered The Guardian an opportunity: UK must stockpile food in readiness for climate shocks or war, expert warns.

It’s a good read, unsurprisingly, with some fine facts to scare yourself with, should they be relevant to you. The UK is one of the least self-sufficient countries in Europe. The current government has no plans to do anything about that. “[T]he 12,284 supermarkets around the UK are ‘fed’ by just 131 distribution centres.”

“That’s nine companies,” Lang said, “using just 131 distribution centres. In drone war, that’s a sitting duck.”

Lots more where that came from, although the only mention of Brexit fails to underscore that the only possible good thing that could have emerged from it — a food policy worthy of the name — has singularly failed to materialise.

Water Whiplash

Willingness to pay is a wonderfully slippery idea. People tell you what they would be willing to pay for something, but don’t actually have to do anything. (cf willingness to eat, below). Still, I’m happy that a recent research paper (Willingness to Pay for Water Reuse in Small Communities in the United States) prompted Grist magazine to do a good article based on the results.

Some of the points will be familiar to long-term listeners. Recycled water can be so pure the plants have to add minerals back both to make it taste better and to protect human health. Beyond the technical aspects of recycling actual toilet water, however, the article goes into various other ways to conserve water supplies. Pumping too much from underground aquifers is perhaps the biggest issue. Techniques to mitigate the risks essentially negate the consequences of modern life, like installing “bioswales” alongside roads. These are “ditches full of vegetation” that collect the rain that streams off the adjacent hard surfaces and allows it to percolate into the ground and, with luck, make its way down into aquifers. I particularly liked this one that some farmers are apparently embracing:

When rains fall heavily, and there’s a surplus of water, channels divert fluid into “spreading grounds” — basically big dirt bowls built into the landscape. That allows precipitation to percolate back into the ground.

Sounds like they’ve reinvented the floodplain.

And just for the record, let me state the obvious. It isn’t small communities that need to be willing to pay more for water. It’s farmers.

Nuts, and Other Lustful Proteins

To be honest, I couldn’t quite believe this headline when I saw it. BEANS; PEAS NUTS. AND SITTING. In a flash, I was a teenager back at Oxford Circus, possibly on my way to Carnaby Street, and gawping at the protein man with his sign and pamphlets. Callow me never thought to wonder who he was or what his life was like. Kudos, then, to The Common Table for recounting the story of Stanley Green.

It was a pleasure to learn about him even though, had I been so-minded, I could have checked Wikipedia myself. So, thanks to Sophie Lovell for pointing me in that direction.

We Will Not Have to Eat the Bugs

Back in September 2024 Dustin Crummett, executive director of The Insect Institute, told me about the financial difficulties facing firms trying to persuade us, our livestock, and our pets to eat more insects. The prediction that “the edible insect bubble could soon burst” now looks more likely than ever, with a good roundup from Vox magazine, which is easier to read at Mother Jones.

What’s new is the extent of the problem.

Of the 20 or so largest insect farming startups, almost a quarter have gone belly up in recent years, including the very largest, Ÿnsect, which ceased operations in December.
All told, shuttered insect farming startups account for almost half of all investment into the industry.

And a lot of that funding came from governments around the world.

The rest of the story is much as Dustin explained. The waste recycling angle doesn’t hold up, because big companies are buying “waste” that can be fed to livestock directly, without being processed by insects. And if they use actual food waste, the nutritional profile of the resulting insects is too variable to be commercially viable as a feed. Keeping insects cozy and warm in temperate zones remains expensive.

In the end, though, the biggest problem remains that people who don’t already eat insects are not choosing to do so. Let’s force them, says the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) — I kid you not. IPIFF wants the EU “to mandate publicly funded food services, like school cafeterias, to buy insect meat and publicly owned farms to buy insect meal to feed to their animals”.

Cheese Courses

There are, according to this recent article, two approaches to the business of cheese: mass-produced and artisanal.

[H]istorically, mass-produced cheese is made on paper-thin margins.
“If you’re making two cents on a pound, you’re doing really well,” …
Due to these economic constraints, cheesemakers either go very big into commodity production, or stay small in the artisanal market where margins are higher. That’s where the opportunities abound.

The article goes on to explore what’s happening with small-scale cheese in the USA and Europe, what with online courses, social-media influencers, and a public that is “hungrier for fancier, diverse cheeses”.

I noticed the article in part because I have an interview in the can that will, I hope, create new respect for artisanal cheeses. Expect that in three weeks.

Take care