Ill Fares the Land: Confronting Unsustainability in the U.K. Food System through Political Agroecology and Degrowth

Mark Tilzey ()
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Mark Tilzey: Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry CV8 3LG, UK

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-39

Abstract: The U.K. food system exhibits strong unsustainability indicators across multiple dimensions, both in terms of food and nutritional insecurity and in terms of adverse climate change, biodiversity, and physical resource impacts. These indices of an unsustainable and inequitable social metabolism are the result of capitalist agriculture and society in general and, more specifically, of neoliberal and austerity policies adopted with vigour since the global financial crisis. The causal, capitalistic, and, latterly, more neoliberal bases of the U.K. food system are delineated in the first section of the paper. These bases are then detailed in terms of their impacts in exacerbating climate change, biodiversity (and resource) decline and loss, and food and nutritional insecurity. The political narratives and policy frameworks available to dissemble, mitigate, or, more rarely, to address (resolve) these impacts are then delineated. It is argued that the only policy framework available that strongly integrates food security (social equity) with ecological sustainability is political agroecology and an accompanying degrowth strategy. The final section of the paper details what political agroecology and degrowth might entail for the U.K. food system.

Keywords: U.K. food system; capitalism; neoliberalism; climate change; biodiversity; food insecurity; political agroecology; food sovereignty; degrowth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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