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The article “A Very British Famine” argues that Britain has become dangerously dependent upon long and fragile supply chains for its food. We have assumed that supermarket shelves will always remain full, imports will always arrive, fuel will always be available and money will always buy whatever we need. Yet these assumptions rest upon an industrial system which is becoming increasingly vulnerable to energy constraints, financial instability, climate disruption and international conflict.

If these pressures intensify, food shortages are unlikely to appear first as complete starvation. Instead, they will emerge as empty shelves, rationing, rising prices, shortages of particular products and growing difficulty in obtaining basic necessities. Those with money may still struggle to buy what is simply unavailable.

The conventional response is to imagine that government will somehow rescue the situation. But national governments can only redistribute what already exists. If there is insufficient food entering the country, no amount of administration can create supplies that do not exist.

Many people assume that communities would then depend upon charity. That may happen for a time, but charity is not a stable economic system. It relies upon surplus. As surplus disappears, charity also becomes increasingly difficult.

Localism offers something entirely different.

In a localist society, people do not depend primarily upon gifts from strangers. They depend upon the productive capacity of their own locality. Food is grown locally because local people require it. Skills are shared because neighbours depend upon one another. Land is used productively because idle land becomes an unaffordable luxury. Security comes from participation rather than from dependence.

This is not a moral argument. It is simply the way societies have organised themselves whenever large-scale systems have failed.

As imported food becomes less reliable, more land will have to return to cultivation. Gardens, orchards, smallholdings and unused land will once again become productive. Families will rediscover skills which industrial society allowed them to forget. Local food processing, storage, repair and distribution will all become valuable occupations.

In such circumstances, local cooperation is no longer an act of generosity. It becomes ordinary economic behaviour. People work together because everyone benefits from reliable local production.

This is why localism should not be presented merely as an attractive political philosophy. It is the natural outcome of a society adapting to physical limits. As national systems lose resilience, local systems gain importance.

The future is therefore unlikely to consist simply of greater hardship. It is more likely to involve a gradual transfer of responsibility from distant institutions to local people themselves.

That transition will not be easy. It will require changes in land ownership, education, planning, farming and local enterprise. But once the old assumptions no longer hold, the direction becomes increasingly obvious.

Localism is not charity.

It is the practical means by which people secure food, livelihoods and prosperity when large systems can no longer guarantee them.