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Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
‘Panic buying’ at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic generated enduring media images of empty supermarket shelves and calls for food rationing. The fragility of the 'just-in-time' food system was seemingly exposed yet, as the pandemic progressed in the UK, there were remarkably few food shortages. This book reveals the changing patterns of food provision in the UK during that period, looking at how diets changed and how retail, processing, distribution and production businesses adapted. But beneath the apparent logistical success story, there were injustices as the more vulnerable struggled to access good quality food and some businesses received inadequate help.
The authors consider the winners and losers in a time of rapid social change, the lasting impacts on the UK food system and lessons to be learned for a food system dependent on imports and large retailers and with a high burden of diet-related health issues.
“Crises help expose and unsettle previously taken-for-granted assumptions, and this book explains what the COVID-19 pandemic revealed about how the UK food system functions. A must-read for agri-food scholars.” Neil Ward, University of East Anglia
Michael Winter OBE is Glanely Professor of Agricultural Change at the University of Exeter and Chair of Devon’s Local Nature Partnership.
Steven Guilbert is Research Impact Fellow at the University of Exeter.
Timothy Wilkinson is Research Fellow at the Centre for Rural Policy Research, University of Exeter
Matt Lobley is Professor of Rural Resource Management and Director of the Centre for Rural Policy Research at the University of Exeter.
Catherine Broomfield is Research Associate at the Centre for Rural Policy Research at the University of Exeter.
1. Introduction
2. The UK Food System
3. Keeping the Supermarket Shelves Stocked
4. The Role of Alternative Food Networks: Plugging Gaps or Building Back Better?
5. From Eating Out to Eating In
6. Food Justice: The Poverty and Health Dimension
7. What Happened to Farmers and Fishers?
8. Where Next for the British Food System?