There is a lot of talk about food being a ‘national security’ issue at the moment – in government, in the media and in the food and farming movement. In this blog post, Jyoti Fernandes and Yali Banton-Heath of the Landworkers’ Alliance reflect on how we might reclaim the concept of ‘security’ in times of crisis, and use it in a way which supports communities, farmers and food producers – both here in the UK and overseas – to further the global movement for climate justice and food sovereignty.
What makes us feel secure as a nation? Many people would say being part of safe and supportive communities, having a housing system which provides decent and secure homes to live in, or having well-functioning public services. Others might say it’s about having reliable access to nourishing food, affordable goods and employment opportunities which offer job security and a good income.
So what poses a threat to this sense of security? What destabilises our sense of safety? Well, some might point towards extreme weather events like flooding and wildfires which threaten homes, landscapes and food systems. Some might look towards divisory far-right politics ripping through communities, the rise of unregulated AI, or the threat of another global pandemic. And others might place their primary anxieties at the door of geopolitical instability or the threat of foreign aggression.
Food intersects with all of these interpretations; whether through droughts and poor crop harvests in Europe, flooded fields here in the UK, the vilification of migrant farmworkers, conflict in Ukraine and Iran disrupting global commodity markets, or Andy Burnham last month encouraging the public to stockpile essential food items.
Being able to feed ourselves and have a functioning and resilient food system in times of crisis is of vital importance to our sense of safety and security, and ultimately our collective survival.
Right to Food
The majority of decisions about how we organise our food system are made at the national level, with the UK’s landmass, climate and population largely shaping the parameters for what is deemed to be possible. It is therefore the fundamental responsibility of a nation and its government to ensure that everyone’s universal ‘Right to Food’ is met. But for years, successive governments have treated food and farming as something to be left to the market, underfunded, and not valued for the essential role it plays in our society.
In June of this year, the UK Government recognised the food system as ‘critical national infrastructure’ in its 2050 Farming Roadmap for England. This is something which the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA) welcomed, as it marked a long overdue recognition that our food system is indeed a matter of national security, and something that is fundamental to our collective survival, security and safety. Our logic was that if the Government is finally beginning to treat it as critical infrastructure, then surely this represents an admission that they also have responsibility to intervene in times of crisis, instability or threat. Whether this is indeed an indication of a real shift in approach, however, remains to be seen.
While we welcome the use of a ‘national security’ framing in this instance, it doesn’t mean that we believe its use by the government and the media elsewhere should go unscrutinised.
Security against what?
In 2025, the UK government published their Strategic Defence Review and National Security Strategy in an attempt to pave the way for a ‘war-ready’ UK. Both publications recognised the UK’s overreliance on overseas food imports, and since its publication government figures have continually reinforced the narrative that ‘food security is national security’.
For many, the threat of foreign aggression and war understandably raises a deep sense of panic and urgency. If our worst fears were to come true tomorrow, and Russia declared war with the UK, then the argument for a resilient domestic food supply would of course be paramount. If the UK’s global food supply chains were to become destabilised or blocked, then 40% of our food supply would be at risk. We would need to produce enough food here to make up the losses.
But the reality is that our worst nightmare is, in fact, already upon us. Climate breakdown is unfolding in front of our eyes, wrecking harvests and pushing our global food system to the brink of collapse; yet for some reason it isn’t afforded the same sense of national alarm, decisive action or public funds.
Rather than laying out plans to build national security through supporting farmers and investing in deep climate adaptation, the 2025 government reports made a decisive commitment to a highly militarised approach to national security, opting instead to boost government spending on weapons and defence.
Orwellian ‘double speak’
The UK Government’s argument for taking a militarised approach to improving national security is unfortunately Orwellian ‘double speak’ – a deliberate distortion of language to obscure true meaning. This is because increasing spending on weapons, war machines and surveillance – far from making us feel safer and more secure – actually perpetuates a global culture of fear and insecurity.
Rethinking Security’s Alternative Security Review and the Alternative Defence Review published by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) examine how militarisation has:
“…distorted national priorities, fuelled global instability, undermined international law, harmed the environment, and diverted investment from public services and social infrastructure.”
Not only does directing more attention and resources towards defence and weapons perpetuate anxiety and instability, but practically speaking it also actively drains funds away from building security elsewhere in society. For example, this summer the UK Government set a budget for 12 new Lockheed Martin F-35A fighter jets, at a total cost of £1billion; a figure which represents a small fraction of the UK’s £298 billion Defence Investment Plan.
But yet again this year, the farming community in England were shocked when a comparatively minuscule £240 *million* budget for the 2026/2027 Sustainable Farming Incentive ran out in just 6 hours. These successively insufficient farming budgets continue to create instability within the farming community, ultimately creating a more vulnerable food system, and a more insecure nation.
This budgetary imbalance is a trend that is not only impacting the farming community, but also the NHS, teachers, and public services across the UK – people who are all working on the frontline of ensuring we can all live in a safe and secure nation. Bombs won’t feed people. Fighter jets will do nothing for public health. Missile drones won’t solve the climate crisis.
Reclaiming ‘security’
The LWA fundamentally and explicitly rejects disproportionate government spending on the military industrial complex. As an internationalist organisation and a member of La Via Campesina, our movement has strong roots in the global struggle against militarism, war and imperialism. These are roots that we continue to draw from.
In order to develop a demilitarised national security strategy rooted in peace, we need to begin reclaiming the concept of ‘security’ as part of a wider understanding of what makes humanity feel safe and secure. There are already a lot of groups and individuals within our movement working on exactly this.
Psychologically speaking, a healthy sense of security is provided by knowing you can turn to someone for protection whenever you feel overwhelmed, stressed, or afraid. Related to the concept of psychological security is the concept of emotional regulation – the ability to manage shocks and recover quickly from distress because your nervous system is not consumed by fears of abandonment or rejection. These are concepts related to the individual, but we can apply these concepts collectively, on a societal and national level, to think about how we can build a ‘national security’ which enables humanity to be safe, secure, and to thrive.
Furthermore, food sovereignty is vital to the concept of ‘steadying’ which means building security through social cohesion, where in times of emergency – such as extreme weather – communities respond with mutual aid and a spirit of togetherness. Communities with deep connections and mutual-aid networks recover much faster because neighbours can share resources, coordinate local emergency responses, and offer safety. We all saw this in real time during Covid-19 when our communities came together to build networks of support, buy veg from local farmers, and support vulnerable people with their weekly shop. Food sovereignty regulates the “nervous system” of society. This is the slow and steady work of building true peace.
This social cohesion, by the way, is currently being deliberately torn apart by the fomenting of far-right politics, xenophobia and racism in our communities – but no one in the mainstream media or government seems to recognise this is a fundamental threat to our national security either.
A national security strategy rooted in food sovereignty
Food sovereignty holds so many of the answers to building more secure and resilient communities, nations and ecosystems. Food sovereignty lessens our dependence on globalised supply chains by focussing instead on local food webs. It dismantles the industrial reliance on chemical inputs and on fossil fuels by working with the Earth’s living systems instead. It rebuilds social cohesion and nourishes community. It listens to local needs and adapts to local conditions.
So what would a demilitarised national security strategy rooted in food sovereignty look like for the UK?
Firstly, we need urgent investment into emergency food infrastructure such as stockpiles, grain silos and emergency distribution networks to ensure we are able to cope with shocks such as extreme weather, cyber attacks, wars, pandemics, or crop failures.
Secondly, we would need a clear pathway to ditching our dependence on chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Like the famous warning from Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara goes: “He who feeds you, controls you”. The dominant producers of chemical fertilisers, controlling global supply of key inputs and outputs, include China, Russia, the United States, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.
Thirdly, we would require Right to Food legislation which guarantees reliable access to food through predictable food costs, preventing sudden inflation spikes, protecting lower-income citizens and stabilising the broader economy. This should include social security programmes like healthy food vouchers to ensure that in times of crisis, everyone can be fed.
Finally, and most importantly for the long-term, we need the government to commit meaningful investment towards building agroecological localised food webs here in the UK. We need more people working on the land to produce food in a way which balances climate resilience with land use and nutritional need. These landworkers will need housing, a decent income, and relevant training and ongoing support.
Food sovereignty knows no borders
The work of the LWA has always been rooted in an internationalist approach, and we know that no one has security until everyone has security.
“We cannot expect to enjoy peace at home unless the same conditions exist abroad, but many actions taken in the name of national security—wars, arms sales, support for autocratic governments—routinely generate insecurity overseas, which then ‘blows back’, generating insecurity for everyone.” – Rethinking Security
The work of building food sovereignty therefore extends beyond our borders. It is not enough for the UK to achieve ‘national’ food security, if it relies on oppression, extraction and hunger elsewhere. Being able to feed ourselves is therefore an international solidarity, of peacebuilding, and of global resilience. As the climate crisis worsens, people must have the right to build food sovereignty in their own countries and regions, to reclaim their food systems from global supply chains and Free Trade Agreements, and focus on building climate-resilient agriculture in a way which meets their own needs.
Genuine security requires us to address global issues that impact us all; including global warming, biodiversity loss, inequality, racism and so much more. Our approach to building safety globally should prioritise diplomacy, global cooperation, land rights, environmental protection, conflict prevention, and investment in health, education, climate resilience, social care, the creation of well-paid jobs and the urgent need to build peace and justice—not war—for the 21st century.
We urgently need a credible, democratic alternative to militarism: a sustainable economy grounded in agroecology and land-based economies, climate justice, and global solidarity. National security will never be found through a pursuit of militarism; true security will always lie in the peace-building and resilient power of food sovereignty. We’re therefore echoing our calls for a significant reduction in military spending – both at home in the UK and globally – with a corresponding increase in spending on food, farming, and global climate adaptation instead.
A version of this article was first published by the Landworkers’ Alliance on 26 October 2026.
Jyoti Fernandes is an agroecological smallholder with sheep, cows and orchards based in Dorset, UK. Jyoti coordinates the Policy, Lobbying and Campaigning work of the LWA for UK wide campaigns and England specific lobbying on the agricultural transition.
Yali Banton-Heath works with the LWA campaigns team to develop their campaign communication strategies. She has an academic background in overseas “development” and human rights law, and has focussed the bulk of her research and writing on land justice, land law and peasant struggles both in the UK and internationally.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credit: Richard Reeve. Orchard and farmland, Severn Valley, Gloucestershire.
