The latest warnings from the Bank of England and Britain’s supermarket leaders should not be seen as an isolated inflation story. They are another indication that the global food system, built during decades of economic expansion and abundant cheap energy, is becoming progressively less reliable.
The immediate causes are familiar enough. Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, disrupted harvests, war in the Middle East, higher fertiliser prices and more expensive transport are all pushing food prices upwards. Yet these are not separate events. They are interacting pressures acting on a system that has become increasingly fragile.
For many years Britain has relied on the assumption that food could always be obtained from somewhere else. If Spain suffered drought, another country would supply the fruit. If one shipping route became difficult, another could be found. If energy became more expensive, the additional costs could simply be absorbed by a growing economy.
Those assumptions are beginning to fail.
The shrinking economy described by Tim Morgan means that societies are no longer becoming steadily wealthier. Instead, there is less surplus energy available to support increasingly complex global supply chains. At the very moment when climate instability is increasing, the economic capacity needed to absorb repeated shocks is declining.
Food inflation is therefore becoming structural rather than temporary.
Every disruption now exposes another weakness. A wildfire destroys olive groves. Drought reduces cereal yields. Conflict interrupts fertiliser supplies. Fuel prices rise. Transport costs increase. Supermarkets compete for scarcer produce. Consumers pay more.
Governments naturally respond by promising to reduce the cost of living. But governments cannot legislate for plentiful harvests, cheap diesel or abundant fertiliser. They cannot command rain to fall or shipping lanes to remain open.
The danger is that politics continues to promise outcomes that the physical economy can no longer deliver.
Britain has become heavily dependent upon imported food. Many products travel thousands of miles before reaching supermarket shelves. Such systems work well during periods of stability. They become progressively less dependable when confronted by repeated environmental, geopolitical and economic shocks.
Localism offers a different direction.
Instead of asking how global supply chains can be restored to their previous efficiency, localism asks how communities can become less dependent upon them.
This does not imply complete self-sufficiency. Few localities could produce everything they require. It does mean increasing resilience by shortening supply chains wherever practical.
The opportunities are numerous.
More locally grown fruit and vegetables.
Greater support for nearby livestock producers.
Local food processing.
Farmers’ markets and community food hubs.
Community orchards.
Allotments and productive gardens.
Better food storage and preservation.
Reduced dependence on imported seasonal produce.
Each step may appear modest, but together they reduce vulnerability to distant disruptions over which local communities have no control.
The coming years are likely to bring more frequent weather extremes across many food-producing regions. They are also likely to bring continuing geopolitical instability, rising insurance costs, higher transport costs and increasing pressure on agricultural inputs. None of these developments sits comfortably alongside a highly centralised food distribution system.
The lesson is becoming increasingly clear.
Food security can no longer be measured simply by the amount of food available somewhere in the world. It depends upon whether that food can still be produced, transported, financed and delivered at prices ordinary households can afford.
In a shrinking economy these conditions become steadily more difficult to satisfy.
Local food production will never replace international trade entirely. Nor should it. But every tonne of food produced close to where it is consumed reduces exposure to the growing uncertainties of the global system.
The cost-of-living debate therefore risks concentrating on symptoms rather than causes.
The deeper issue is that Britain has built its food system around assumptions that belong to the age of expansion. Those assumptions are being overtaken by physical limits, declining economic surplus and increasing environmental volatility.
As global supply chains become less dependable, local food resilience ceases to be an environmental ideal or a lifestyle choice. It becomes an economic necessary.
A move towards localism is sometimes misunderstood as a return to the past – perhaps even a return to feudalism, where a small number of landowners controlled most of the countryside and ordinary people had little say over how land was used. That is not the intention.
Localism requires the opposite. It requires that ordinary people have a greater connection with the land on which they live and the ability to produce at least some of the essentials of life.
Land ownership should not mean that a few individuals or corporations control a finite resource that everyone depends upon. Land is not simply another financial asset. It is the foundation of food, water, biodiversity and community life.
A localist society would seek a wider distribution of access to land. This does not mean that everyone needs to own a large farm. A small plot, allotment, community garden or shared local holding can provide valuable food production and reconnect people with the natural systems that support them.
The aim is not ownership by a privileged few, but stewardship by many.
What Kind of Farming?
The farming system required for a localist future would be very different from the industrial model that developed during the period of cheap fossil energy.
Industrial agriculture depends heavily on machinery, long supply chains, artificial fertilisers, pesticides and global markets. It has achieved very high yields, but it has also created problems – soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, dependence on imported inputs and vulnerability when energy becomes expensive.
Local farming would focus more on resilience than maximum production.
This could include:
Market gardens producing vegetables close to where people live.
Mixed farms combining crops and livestock rather than separating them.
Agroforestry where trees, crops and animals are integrated together.
Permaculture systems designed around natural cycles.
Small orchards and community food growing areas.
Traditional crop varieties that are adapted to local conditions.
The emphasis would be on producing nutritious food with fewer external inputs and using local knowledge.
What About Fertiliser?
Modern agriculture relies heavily on nitrogen fertiliser produced using natural gas. This has been one of the major drivers of increased food production over the last century. However, it is also an example of how the industrial economy depends upon abundant energy.
A localist future would need to reduce dependence on synthetic fertilisers and rebuild natural soil fertility.
Possible approaches include:
Compost made from local organic waste.
Animal manure from local livestock systems.
Green manures, where crops such as clover and legumes are grown to fix nitrogen naturally.
Cover crops to protect soil and improve fertility.
Biochar, produced from organic material, to improve soil structure and retain nutrients.
Careful crop rotation to prevent soil exhaustion.
This does not mean abandoning all modern knowledge. Science and technology will still have a role. The difference is that technology would support natural systems rather than attempting to replace them.
Land as a Community Asset
In a localist economy, land would increasingly be viewed as a community asset rather than simply a commodity.
This could include:
Community-owned farms.
Shared equipment pools.
Local food cooperatives.
Small parcels made available for new growers.
Long-term leases that encourage stewardship.
A young person should not need to inherit wealth or buy hundreds of acres to participate in food production. Access to land is as important as access to education or housing.
The Scale of Farming
The future is unlikely to be a return to the small farms of the past exactly as they existed. Those farms often involved very hard physical labour and low productivity.
Nor is the answer simply to continue with ever larger industrial farms.
The likely direction is a mixture:
Larger areas producing staple crops efficiently.
Smaller local farms producing fresh food.
Communities growing some of their own requirements.
More integration between town and countryside.
The key change is that food production becomes less distant and anonymous. People understand where their food comes from and participate in maintaining the systems that produce it.
Land Ownership and the Post-Growth Economy
As the economy moves away from the era of unlimited growth based on cheap energy, land will become increasingly important.
The question will not simply be “how much money can land make?” but “how can land support the survival and wellbeing of communities?”
Localism is therefore not about going backwards. It is about adapting to a different economic reality.
The industrial age allowed humanity to separate itself from local resources. Cheap energy made it possible to import food, transport goods across the world and concentrate ownership.
A post-growth future will require a closer relationship between people and place.
Land should belong to people – but ownership must come with responsibility. The purpose of land is not only to generate wealth. Its deeper purpose is to sustain life.
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.
The Waru Waru system of the Andean highlands is one of the most remarkable examples of local resilience ever developed. Long before industrial agriculture, the people living around Lake Titicaca, in what is now Peru and Bolivia, created an agricultural landscape that enabled them to grow reliable crops under some of the world’s most difficult conditions.
Waru Waru, sometimes called raised fields, consists of long, broad ridges of cultivated soil separated by water-filled channels. The raised beds may be several metres wide and extend for hundreds of metres. The surrounding canals perform several vital functions. During the day they absorb the sun’s warmth and, at night, release it slowly, reducing the risk of frost that would otherwise destroy crops. The canals also collect rainwater, improve drainage during heavy rainfall, reduce drought stress during dry periods and provide habitat for fish, frogs and beneficial wildlife. Organic matter accumulating in the canals can be dredged periodically and spread back onto the raised beds, continually renewing soil fertility.
The system enabled communities living more than 3,500 metres above sea level to produce potatoes, quinoa and other crops reliably for centuries without artificial fertilisers, irrigation pumps or fossil fuels. It represented an elegant partnership between people and nature rather than an attempt to dominate it.
Modern researchers have demonstrated that reconstructed Waru Waru fields frequently outperform conventional farming in the same environment. The system requires more human labour but far fewer external inputs, making it particularly attractive where energy, fertiliser and machinery become scarce or expensive.
For those thinking about a future beyond economic growth, Waru Waru offers an important lesson. It shows that prosperity does not always depend upon advanced technology or increasing consumption. Instead, it can arise from careful observation of natural processes and the accumulation of local knowledge over many generations.
Localism naturally points in this direction. As global supply chains become less reliable and imported fertilisers, fuels and machinery become more costly, every locality will need to rediscover methods suited to its own climate, soils and landscape. The solution in Herefordshire will not be identical to that of the Andes, but the underlying principle is exactly the same. Farming should work with local conditions rather than against them.
The Waru Waru system reminds us that the future may depend as much upon recovering forgotten wisdom as inventing new technologies. Thousands of years ago, small communities created an agricultural system that was productive, resilient and largely self-sustaining. Those qualities may prove increasingly valuable in the decades ahead as local communities seek practical ways of living well within the limits of their own land.
A shrinking economy, seen from the ground, does not begin with policy or national plans. It begins in small changes in daily life, in the cost of food, in the availability of work, and in what people notice they can no longer rely on. The food system then adjusts from the bottom up, because it has to.
From a grassroots perspective, the first shift is often in household behaviour. People begin to grow more of their own food not out of ideology but out of practicality. Gardens, allotments and any available patches of land become more important. The same applies to community spaces where informal growing develops alongside older traditions of local food knowledge.
In this setting, the ideas associated with Professor Tim Benton can be understood in a very direct way. The structure of food is not an abstract system but something experienced through rising prices, fewer imported goods, and a gradual narrowing of choice. As imports become less reliable, diets adjust. People do not plan this in advance, they respond to what is available.
Animal farming also changes from the ground upwards. Intensive systems based on imported feed become harder to sustain, while grazing animals and mixed small holdings become more practical. This shift is not driven by policy first, but by cost and availability. Farmers and smallholders adapt by simplifying their systems and relying more on local inputs.
Labour follows a similar path. As formal employment contracts and discretionary work weaken, people move into whatever local work exists. Food growing, small scale processing, repair work and distribution begin to absorb labour that would otherwise be unused. This is not always a smooth transition. It is often uneven and informal, but it gradually becomes the real economy that people depend on.
Processing becomes something visible again. Instead of being hidden in large industrial facilities, it appears in villages, farms, community buildings and domestic settings. People milling grain, preserving vegetables, baking bread, making cheese or preparing meat are not specialists in the modern sense but participants in a shared necessity. Labour intensity rises because scale falls. More hands are needed for smaller, more frequent tasks.
Training also shifts in character. Instead of formal institutions defining entry routes, knowledge spreads through practice. People who already garden become informal teachers. Skills are passed on in allotments, community gardens and smallholdings. Learning becomes local, direct and repetitive, rather than abstract or credential based.
Diet changes in a similarly grounded way. Less meat is eaten not through instruction but because feed and imported inputs become expensive. Where animals are kept, they tend to be part of mixed local systems rather than intensive units. This shift has knock-on effects for health. As diets simplify and processed food becomes less dominant, there is often a reduction in obesity and long term conditions associated with diet, which in turn reduces pressure on local health services.
Allotments and smallholdings become central rather than marginal. They are no longer seen as leisure spaces but as part of household security. Within them, informal specialisation develops. Some focus on vegetables, others on fruit trees, seed saving, poultry or composting systems. Orchards in particular become valuable again because they provide long term food with relatively low ongoing input once established.
Biofuels appear in small and practical forms rather than large industrial schemes. They are used where necessary for local transport or essential machinery, but they remain constrained by land availability. In most cases they sit alongside food production rather than replacing it.
Alongside this, a wood based economy begins to reappear in everyday life. Coppicing, local timber use and small scale forestry become important for fuel, building and tools. This is not a new invention but a reactivation of older practices adapted to present constraints.
Trade also becomes more local in character. Where cash is limited or unreliable, informal exchange develops. Local currencies or simple barter systems emerge to keep basic goods moving between people. These systems are not uniform but reflect the needs of particular places.
Other forms of production re-emerge in small but significant ways. Hops grown locally support small breweries that serve nearby communities. Herbs and medicinal plants become more widely cultivated and used, with herbalists and growers responding to demand that is both practical and cultural. Hand tools, repair skills and small scale manufacture gain importance as imported goods become harder to obtain or maintain.
From this perspective, the shrinking economy is not experienced as a single transition but as a series of adjustments made by households, growers, workers and small communities. The overall effect is a gradual rebuilding of food, energy and labour systems from the ground up, shaped less by design and more by necessity.
This article has been inspired by Professor Tim Benton’s chapter, “Food Systems Futures and How to Achieve Them”, published as part of Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets. The original chapter is freely available here:
Whilst this essay develops a perspective based on local food systems and resilience, it is grounded in Professor Benton’s analysis of the global food system and the pressures it now faces.
Professor Tim Benton’s work on food systems begins from a simple but uncomfortable observation. The modern global food system is extraordinarily productive, yet increasingly fragile. It delivers large quantities of food across the world, but it does so through systems that are highly complex, energy intensive, and deeply dependent on long supply chains.
For much of the twentieth century, agricultural policy was focused almost entirely on increasing production. The priority was to maximise yields, reduce labour costs, and expand output through mechanisation, chemical fertilisers, improved crop varieties, and global trade. This approach succeeded in increasing food availability on a scale never seen before.
However, it also created a system that depends heavily on a narrow range of staple crops, intensive livestock production, and a high level of external inputs such as fuel, fertiliser, and pesticides. At the same time, large areas of agriculture became increasingly specialised, and food systems became more globally interconnected.
The result is a system that appears efficient under stable conditions, but is exposed when conditions change.
Professor Benton highlights a central paradox. There is more than enough food produced globally to feed everyone, yet hunger and poor nutrition persist. This is not simply a question of total supply. It is also a question of distribution, affordability, diet quality, and the structure of food systems.
Many populations now consume diets high in processed foods, fats, and sugars, while lacking sufficient access to fresh fruit, vegetables, and diverse plant-based foods. At the same time, agriculture continues to rely heavily on a limited set of crops that are primarily traded in global commodity markets.
This mismatch between production and nutritional need lies at the heart of the modern food challenge.
At the same time, environmental pressures are increasing. Climate change is altering rainfall patterns, increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, and reducing the reliability of harvests in many parts of the world. Soil degradation continues in many intensively farmed areas. Biodiversity loss is weakening the ecological systems that support agriculture, including pollinators and natural pest control.
Energy costs and supply volatility add another layer of uncertainty, given the dependence of modern agriculture on fossil fuels for machinery, fertiliser production, processing, and transport.
Taken individually, these pressures are serious. Taken together, they suggest a system under increasing strain.
One of Professor Benton’s key insights is that complexity itself creates vulnerability. Modern food systems rely on long and interconnected supply chains. A single product may depend on inputs from multiple countries, be processed in several locations, and be transported over long distances before reaching consumers.
This structure has developed over decades in pursuit of efficiency and low cost. It works well when global systems are stable. However, it becomes fragile when disrupted by political conflict, pandemics, transport interruptions, or energy shocks.
Recent events have already demonstrated this fragility. Disruptions to trade routes, increases in energy prices, and geopolitical instability have all led to sharp rises in food prices and reduced availability in certain categories.
The issue is not that food disappears entirely, but that the system becomes less reliable and more expensive.
Professor Benton therefore argues that the future of food cannot be addressed simply by increasing production. Instead, it requires a fundamental reconsideration of how food systems are structured.
Technological innovation will continue to play a role. Improvements in crop genetics, precision agriculture, robotics, data analysis, and alternative proteins may all contribute to efficiency and sustainability. However, these solutions often assume that the existing global structure remains intact.
The deeper question is whether that structure itself is sufficiently resilient for an uncertain future.
A useful way to think about resilience is through diversity. Natural ecosystems are not based on uniformity. They rely on a wide range of species performing different roles. This diversity provides stability by preventing a total system failure when one element is disrupted.
Modern agriculture, by contrast, has moved towards uniformity. Large-scale monocultures dominate many landscapes, and supply chains are highly concentrated.
This creates efficiency, but reduces flexibility.
Reintroducing diversity into food systems can therefore be understood as a form of risk management as much as an environmental goal.
This is where the idea of local food systems becomes particularly important.
A local food system is not simply one that reduces transport distances or supports nearby farmers, although these are valuable outcomes. Its deeper significance lies in resilience and distributed capability.
When food production is spread across many localities rather than concentrated in a small number of large production centres, the system becomes less vulnerable to large-scale disruption. A problem in one place does not automatically cascade through the entire system.
In addition, knowledge and skills are preserved more widely. Farming, horticulture, food processing, and land management remain part of everyday life rather than being confined to a shrinking specialist sector.
In the United Kingdom, this issue is particularly relevant. A significant proportion of food is imported. Supermarket availability depends on functioning international trade, stable fuel supplies, and complex logistics networks.
These systems usually operate effectively. However, they are not guaranteed to remain stable under all conditions.
Recent events have shown how quickly external shocks can affect prices and availability. The system does not need to fail completely for its weaknesses to become visible. Partial disruption is enough to reveal underlying fragility.
A more resilient approach would not remove international trade. Many foods cannot be produced in the United Kingdom, and global exchange has long contributed to dietary variety and cultural exchange.
The issue is balance.
Essential food security would be strengthened by increasing localities’ capacity to produce a greater share of their basic food needs. Trade would then complement local production rather than replace it.
This would reduce dependence on long supply chains for essential items, while still allowing access to foods that are naturally imported.
There is also a social dimension to this discussion. Food is not only an economic commodity. It is part of culture, education, health, and community life.
Over time, many people have become disconnected from the processes that produce their food. Cooking skills have declined in some areas, and knowledge of soil, seasons, and agriculture has diminished.
Rebuilding this knowledge would have benefits beyond food production itself. It would strengthen understanding of nature, improve dietary habits, and support healthier communities.
Public policy also plays a significant role in shaping food systems. Governments influence agriculture through procurement, subsidies, regulation, and education. Large public institutions such as schools, hospitals, and care facilities purchase substantial quantities of food.
These purchasing decisions could be used more deliberately to support resilient local production where appropriate.
In addition, education systems could place greater emphasis on food literacy, including practical skills such as cooking, gardening, and basic land stewardship.
There is a further economic dimension to consider. Modern food systems have developed within a broader framework that assumes continuous economic growth, low energy costs, and highly efficient global logistics.
However, there is increasing debate about whether these assumptions will remain valid indefinitely.
If growth slows or becomes more uneven, systems designed for maximum efficiency may become less robust. In such conditions, resilience may become more valuable than marginal gains in efficiency.
Efficiency and resilience are not the same thing.
Highly efficient systems reduce waste, lower costs, and optimise production. However, they often do so by removing redundancy. Storage is reduced. Supply chains are streamlined. Producers are consolidated.
This works well under stable conditions, but creates vulnerability when disruptions occur.
Resilient systems, by contrast, maintain a degree of redundancy. They may appear less efficient in purely economic terms, but they are better able to absorb shocks.
Nature provides a clear example of this principle. Ecosystems survive not because they are optimised for a single outcome, but because they contain multiple overlapping functions. When one pathway is disrupted, others can compensate.
Applying this principle to food systems suggests the importance of maintaining multiple sources of production, diverse farming methods, and distributed supply networks.
A resilient food future would therefore include several key elements.
Every locality would retain a meaningful capacity to produce food.
Agricultural knowledge would remain widely distributed.
A greater proportion of fresh food would be produced closer to where it is consumed.
Public institutions would support local production through procurement.
Trade would continue, but would not be the sole foundation of food security.
This is not a return to the past. It is an adaptation to present and future conditions.
Modern tools, scientific knowledge, and improved agricultural techniques can all contribute to stronger local food systems. Technology is not the opposite of localism. It can be an important support for it.
The key distinction is not between modern and traditional methods, but between fragile dependence and distributed resilience.
Professor Benton’s work helps clarify the scale of the challenge. The current food system has delivered abundance, but at the cost of increasing complexity and vulnerability.
The question now is not whether change will occur, but how it will occur and whether it will be planned or forced by circumstances.
A more resilient food system would not rely on a single model. It would combine global trade with strong local production, technological innovation with ecological understanding, and economic efficiency with social and environmental stability.
Above all, it would recognise that food is not simply a commodity. It is a foundation of security, health, and community life.
The future of food will therefore depend on choices made in the present. These choices will shape not only what people eat, but how societies function under conditions of uncertainty.
If resilience becomes the guiding principle, then strengthening local food systems is not a marginal idea. It becomes central to long-term stability.
In that sense, the strongest food system is not necessarily the one that spans the greatest distance. It is the one that can continue to function when wider systems are under strain.
Most people assume that food comes from fields and farms. In reality, much of it comes from natural gas.
This uncomfortable truth lies at the heart of growing warnings about an oncoming food crisis. Modern agriculture does not simply depend upon sunshine, rain and fertile soil. It depends upon vast quantities of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, produced using enormous amounts of energy. Remove that energy, and the food system itself begins to falter.
The invention of the Haber-Bosch process in the early twentieth century transformed the world. By extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere and converting it into ammonia, humanity was able to manufacture fertilisers on an unprecedented scale. Crop yields rose dramatically. Populations expanded. It is estimated that almost half the people alive today are fed because of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers.
Yet this apparent triumph concealed a dangerous dependency.
Ammonia production requires natural gas. Gas is both the raw material and the energy source. When energy prices rise sharply, fertiliser plants reduce output or close altogether because production becomes uneconomic. This happened during the recent energy crises, when fertiliser factories across Europe curtailed operations.
Senior figures in the industry issued stark warnings. The chief executive of one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies warned that the world was facing a food crisis. Others pointed out that half of global food production depends upon fertilisers that can no longer be taken for granted.
The chain of events is simple enough.
Energy shortages lead to reduced fertiliser production.
Reduced fertiliser availability leads to lower application rates by farmers.
Lower fertiliser use leads to lower crop yields.
Lower yields lead to food shortages and rising prices.
But there is another step in the chain that is too often ignored.
When food becomes scarce, those with money can continue to obtain it. Those without money cannot.
If governments simply allow the market to determine who eats and who goes hungry, scarcity falls most heavily upon the poor. Wealthier households may complain about rising prices, but they can often absorb them. Poorer households, already spending a larger proportion of their income on essentials, are forced to cut back. Nutritional quality declines. Meals are skipped. Hunger becomes concentrated amongst those least able to protect themselves.
History teaches this lesson repeatedly. Famines are not always caused by the complete absence of food. Often they arise because people lose the means to command food through the market. Scarcity becomes an issue of entitlement as much as supply.
This is one reason why rationing emerged in Britain during the Second World War. The purpose was not merely administrative control. It was to ensure that limited supplies were shared fairly and that the rich could not simply outbid the poor. The Ministry of Food recognised that shortages and uncontrolled prices would leave many people unable to obtain enough to eat. Orderly distribution at fair prices became a moral necessity as well as an economic one. Britain’s rationing system ensured that everyone received a basic entitlement and, in many poorer households, nutrition actually improved.
For most people in Britain today, the possibility of food rationing seems unimaginable. It belongs to black-and-white photographs and memories of another age. Yet if fertiliser shortages were severe enough to reduce harvests significantly, governments could once again face the same dilemma.
Without rationing, the poor suffer first.
With rationing, hardship is shared.
The remarkable fact is not that rationing might return. It is that a highly sophisticated society could once again be discussing it because of interruptions in the supply of natural gas.
This should force us to reconsider the assumptions upon which our food system rests.
Britain imports a large proportion of its food. Even domestic production relies heavily upon fossil fuel inputs, global supply chains and industrial methods dependent upon synthetic fertilisers. We have built a system optimised for efficiency under ideal conditions, but one possessing limited resilience when those conditions change.
Localism offers another way of thinking.
It does not promise complete self-sufficiency. Nor does it seek to abolish trade. Rather, it asks whether each locality should possess enough productive capacity, knowledge and organisation to weather disruptions beyond its control.
A localist Britain would encourage market gardens, allotments, orchards and smallholdings. It would support smaller farms serving nearby communities. Skills in cultivation, food preservation and seed saving would once again become ordinary parts of community life rather than specialist hobbies. Local food processing and distribution networks would complement national systems rather than disappear entirely.
No local system can eliminate every hardship. Yet local food production can soften the blow. A locality that retains productive land, practical knowledge and mutual obligation is less likely to see its poorest members abandoned to the impersonal logic of the market. Neighbours know who is struggling. Communities can respond before hunger becomes starvation.
Critics may dismiss such ideas as nostalgic. Yet dependence upon industrial fertilisers was itself an historical development. For centuries communities fed themselves using rotations, composting, animal manures and intimate knowledge of local conditions. Modern science has taught us much, but resilience has been sacrificed in pursuit of scale and efficiency.
The choice before us is therefore not between progress and the past. It is between vulnerability and resilience.
If the warnings prove exaggerated, stronger local food systems will still bring healthier communities, stronger local economies and a renewed connection between people and the sources of their nourishment.
If the warnings prove correct, and energy shortages do trigger fertiliser shortages, harvest failures and rationing, localities that have retained the capacity to feed themselves will face the future with greater confidence.
Food security cannot be left entirely to distant markets, fragile supply chains and the fluctuating price of natural gas. The ability to nourish a community is not merely an economic activity. It is one of the first responsibilities of any civilised society.
The coming food crisis, should it arrive, may teach us a lesson we have long forgotten.
The road from the gas field to the dinner table is far shorter than we imagine.
And the road back to resilience begins in the locality.
There is growing concern about the future availability of artificial fertiliser. This concern is not widely understood by the public, but it deserves attention because modern food production depends heavily on it.
Most people assume fertiliser is simply manufactured from minerals. In fact, the most important fertiliser used in modern farming is nitrogen fertiliser, and this depends mainly on natural gas. It is produced using the Haber-Bosch process, which turns nitrogen from the air into ammonia using large amounts of fossil fuel energy.
About half of the world’s food production now depends on this process.
If natural gas becomes expensive, difficult to import, or less available, fertiliser becomes expensive as well. This creates a direct risk to food production in countries like the United Kingdom, which rely heavily on imported fertiliser.
Artificial fertiliser also has another important characteristic. It is produced almost entirely by large industrial organisations and distributed through long supply chains. Farmers, gardeners, and households cannot make it for themselves. This makes soil fertility dependent on distant production systems rather than local resources.
Because of this, people are beginning to ask whether other methods of maintaining soil fertility could play a larger role in future farming.
One possibility is biochar.
Biochar is a charcoal-like material made by heating wood, crop waste, or plant material without oxygen. It has been used for centuries in parts of the Amazon basin, where it helped create extremely fertile soils that are still productive today.
Modern research shows that biochar improves soil in several ways. It helps soil retain water. It supports beneficial microorganisms. It holds nutrients in place so they are not washed away by rain. It improves soil structure. These effects make existing nutrients work better.
Biochar is not a direct replacement for artificial fertiliser because it does not contain large amounts of nitrogen. Instead, it makes natural fertilisers such as compost, manure, and crop residues more effective. In this way it reduces dependence on industrial fertiliser.
Unlike artificial fertiliser, biochar can be made locally. It can be produced in domestic gardens, on small farms, in woodlands, and by community groups using simple equipment. Larger quantities can be produced by farmers and local enterprises. This makes it especially suited to a localist approach to the future economy, in which essential needs such as food and soil fertility are supported increasingly within each locality rather than supplied entirely through national and international industrial systems.
Biochar is already being used in parts of Africa, India, South America, and increasingly in Europe. In most cases it is produced locally from crop waste or woodland material that would otherwise be burned or discarded.
The United Kingdom has a particular advantage in this area. Much of the country already produces woodland thinnings, hedge cuttings, sawmill residues, and garden waste that could be converted into biochar within localities. This means fertility could increasingly be supported using local biological resources rather than imported fossil fuel products.
Seen in this way, biochar is not simply a soil improvement technique. It is an example of how localism can strengthen resilience by shifting part of the foundation of food production from large industrial supply systems to households, farms, and communities working within their own localities.
Biochar will not replace artificial fertiliser overnight. However, it offers a practical way to strengthen soil fertility while reducing dependence on energy intensive industrial systems. As fertiliser prices rise and supplies become less predictable, approaches like this are likely to become more important.
Footnote:
Duchy estate looking for a regenerative farmer
PRINCE William is on the hunt for a new farmer to take on a 900-acre farm in Herefordshire, with a rare long-term arable farming opportunity announced.
The Duchy of Cornwall has made available Monkhall Farm, a 900-acre holding in Callow, near Hereford, under a 25-year regenerative Farm Business Tenancy (rFBT).
The Duchy is seeking a tenant committed to exploring and embedding regenerative practices in UK agriculture.
Monkhall Farm is about 4 miles away from where the author of this blog lives.
Recent reporting has highlighted the rapid closure of abattoirs across the United Kingdom, with serious consequences for family farms and rural communities. The number of licensed abattoirs has fallen from around 2,500 in the 1970s to just over 200 today. As facilities disappear, farmers are increasingly forced to transport animals long distances for slaughter, often 30 to 40 miles or more.
At first sight, this appears to be just another symptom of economic pressure on the farming industry. In reality, it reveals something deeper about the structure of the modern industrial food system. Over the past fifty years the processing of food has become concentrated in fewer and larger facilities. Small abattoirs have been replaced by large regional plants designed to serve supermarket supply chains rather than local markets.
For the industrial food system this concentration makes sense. Large plants reduce unit costs, standardise production, and supply national distribution networks. But the system works only as long as farming itself becomes large, centralised, and integrated with mass distribution.
Family farms operate in a very different world. Their animals are often sold locally, through farm shops, local butchers, farmers’ markets, and direct sales to households. For them, the loss of nearby abattoirs removes a vital part of the local food infrastructure. Without a local slaughter facility, the practical ability to sell meat locally begins to disappear.
The consequences are significant.
Animals must travel longer distances, increasing stress and reducing welfare. Farmers incur higher transport costs. Booking slaughter slots becomes difficult as fewer facilities serve wider areas. Some farmers report that they have had to abandon direct meat sales altogether because the processing infrastructure no longer exists locally.
This situation illustrates a broader structural weakness in the industrial system. When key facilities become centralised, entire local economies lose the practical capacity to operate independently. A farm may still produce livestock, but without nearby processing it cannot easily turn that livestock into locally sold food.
In the emerging era of economic contraction, this concentration becomes increasingly fragile. Transport costs rise, supply chains become less reliable, and large processing plants depend on continuous high throughput to remain profitable. Under such conditions, the disappearance of local infrastructure becomes a systemic risk.
Localism offers a different perspective.
In a local food economy, the abattoir is not simply an industrial facility. It is part of the basic infrastructure of the locality, alongside farms, mills, bakeries, breweries, and local markets. Its role is to enable livestock raised within the locality to be processed and sold within the same area.
Historically this was the normal arrangement. Most towns once had their own slaughterhouses. Animals rarely travelled far from the farms where they were raised. Meat was sold through local butchers who knew the farmers supplying them.
The industrial era replaced this distributed network with a highly concentrated system. For several decades the arrangement appeared efficient because cheap fossil fuels allowed animals, meat, and processed products to be transported across the country with little apparent cost.
But as economic conditions tighten and the cost structures of the industrial system change, the weaknesses of that model become increasingly visible.
From a localist perspective, the current crisis in abattoirs is not merely a problem to be solved by subsidy or regulation. It is a signal that an essential part of the local food economy has been removed.
Rebuilding local abattoirs would therefore have multiple benefits.
Farmers would regain the ability to process livestock locally. Animal journeys would become shorter and less stressful. Local butchers and markets could source meat from nearby farms. Food supply chains would become shorter and more resilient.
Perhaps most importantly, the locality would regain control over an essential part of its own food system.
In the long term, a distributed network of small and medium-scale abattoirs may prove far more compatible with a shrinking, decentralised economy than the highly concentrated processing system that dominates today.
The present wave of closures therefore poses an important question.
If the future economy becomes more local, more human-scale, and less dependent on long-distance transport, should the infrastructure of food production not evolve in the same direction?
Local abattoirs may once again become a normal feature of the British countryside – not as relics of the past, but as practical foundations of a more local food economy.
Before oil, refrigeration and global trade, towns and cities did not sit above the countryside as separate worlds. They were part of it. Every borough and city was embedded in a living web of farms, smallholdings, woods, rivers and market gardens that existed to keep it fed. But the dependence ran both ways. The countryside fed the town, and the town sustained the countryside.
The feeding ground
Every town had a feeding ground. This was the ring of land that lay within a day’s travel by foot, horse or boat. From this land came milk, vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, grain, fish, fuelwood and animal feed. Fresh food could not be stored for long and could not be moved far. This made proximity essential.
A town could not grow larger than the land around it could feed. If harvests failed, the town suffered. If the countryside prospered, the town prospered too.
Markets as the heart of the system
Food moved through markets. Farmers, growers, fishermen and smallholders brought their produce into the borough on market days. Bakers, butchers, brewers, innkeepers and ordinary households bought directly from them.
This was not just trade. It was a social and economic bond. People knew who grew their food. Prices reflected real local supply. If one valley had a bad year, the town felt it immediately.
Markets were also where news travelled, where labour was hired, where credit was extended, and where disputes were settled. The market was the countryside’s window into the town.
Towns were also farming places
Towns did not just consume food. They produced it.
Inside and around boroughs there were:
Market gardens supplying vegetables and herbs
Dairies keeping cows for fresh milk
Piggeries fed on kitchen waste
Poultry yards
Orchards and hop gardens
Maltings, breweries and bakeries
Some towns even ran their own farms. Hereford, for example, had the Hereford City Farm, which survived into the modern period and only closed recently. It was a direct survival of the old idea that a town should have its own land to help feed its people.
Urban waste went back to the land as manure. Animals turned scraps into meat. Nothing was wasted. The town and its surrounding fields formed one working system.
The countryside depended on the town
Farmers did not live in isolation. They depended on the town for things they could not easily provide themselves.
They relied on:
Lawyers to handle land, inheritance and leases
Markets to sell produce and buy tools
Blacksmiths, wheelwrights and harness makers
Millers, brewers and maltsters
Banks, credit and money changers
Doctors, vets and apothecaries
Churches, schools and courts
The town was where rural society was organised and kept functioning. It was the administrative and commercial brain of the local food system.
Family and memory tied town and country together
Most town dwellers were not strangers to the countryside. They, or their forebears, had come from nearby villages and farms. They still had relatives working the land. They knew the lanes, the fields and the farms that supplied their bread, milk and meat.
This kept the system human. Food was not anonymous. It came from people you knew, or people you were related to.
What the industrial age destroyed
Railways, refrigeration and oil broke this balance. Food was pulled in from far away. Towns stopped needing their surrounding land. Farmers were absorbed into national and then global markets. The old local food web dissolved.
Cities became dependent on distant places they would never see.
Why the future will look more like the past
As energy becomes expensive and long supply chains weaken, towns and cities will not be able to rely on food from far away. They will have to rebuild what once existed.
Not self sufficiency in isolation, but a renewed partnership between towns and the land around them.
That is how boroughs were fed for centuries. It is how they will be fed again.
Deep Bed Farming (DBF) is a farming method developed by the Malawian NGO Tiyeni. It’s designed to address a serious agricultural issue in parts of Malawi: a hard, compacted layer of earth (“hardpan”) just under the topsoil, which prevents roots, water and air from penetrating. This limits crop yields, causes soil erosion, and reduces water retention.
DBF involves several practices:
Breaking up the hardpan to allow penetration of roots, water, air.
Creating contour ridges and deep beds — raised beds which help with water retention, reduce runoff, and prevent the hardpan from reforming.
Changed crop rotations, use of cover crops and manure/compost, mulching etc., to improve soil health.
Aftrak is a project combining this farming technique with solar power and electric tractors, aiming to reduce labour, improve yields, and also bring electricity to rural communities. It is led by Loughborough University in collaboration with Tiyeni (Malawi), the Consortium for Battery Innovation (UK), and other partners.
Key Technical Details & Innovation
The tractor is designed as a micro-electric/solar-electric tractor (“walk-behind” style) suitable for smallholder farmers, capable of doing the hard work of preparing land for DBF.
It uses a solar microgrid / solar base station to charge batteries and provide electricity not only for the tractor but also for domestic uses (lighting, phone charging, etc.).
The tractor can cut to a depth of 400 mm (≈ 40 cm) to break the hardpan layer.
The solar array/base station and batteries are built to be modular, somewhat flat-pack to assist local assembly, resilient to local conditions. It uses lead-acid style batteries (deep-cycle, e.g. Varta) rather than more expensive lithium systems, because lead batteries handle heat more simply and cost less (though they are heavier).
Impact & Benefits Observed / Expected
Farmers using this method (DBF) have seen double or even triple yields per hectare in some cases. DBF alone (without the tractor) has already shown big gains. The tractor plus solar should accelerate that, reduce effort, allow more land to be converted, etc.
The project helps reduce labour – using hand tools (hoes, etc.) is arduous, time-consuming, and limiting (especially for older, disabled, women-led households). The tractor eases that burden.
Also brings electricity to villages that often don’t have reliable power. The base station supplies power for lighting, phone charging, possibly some small appliances etc. This can improve quality of life (education, comfort, safety) and reduce reliance on polluting or expensive alternatives.
Funding, Recognition & Deployment
The project has been funded in part by Innovate UK under its Energy Catalyst program.
In 2024, it won the Milken-Motsepe Prize in Green Energy (USD $1 million) for its innovation.
A prototype has been built and trialed in Malawi by the Tiyeni team. Loughborough also did preparatory tests (solar microgrid, tractor operation etc.) in UK settings.
Challenges & Considerations
Cost & infrastructure: Even though this is much cheaper than large tractors or fossil fuel alternatives, there are upfront costs: solar panels, batteries, the base station, and maintenance.
Maintenance & local capacity: For sustainability, local communities need to be able to maintain equipment, replace parts, and manage charging infrastructure. If the system fails, benefits reduce sharply
Scaling: Trials so far are limited; rolling out over large distances (across villages, with varied soil types, differing climates) will bring new challenges.
Battery limitations: Lead acid batteries have limitations (weight, depth of discharge, lifetime) especially under heavy use, heat, etc. But they were chosen because they are more suitable than lithium in this context given cost, availability, heat handling.
Why It Matters
This is more than just a new piece of machinery. It sits at the intersection of:
Food security: Improving yields can help reduce hunger and poverty.
Sustainability & climate resilience: Less reliance on fossil fuels, better soil health, better water retention helps resilience to climate change (e.g. heavy rains, drought).
Energy access: Providing electricity to remote rural communities can support education, health, livelihoods.
Inclusive development: Reducing physical labour is especially helpful for people less able, such as older farmers and women.
Deep digging, sometimes called conservation agriculture or pit planting, has been widely practised in Malawi and across southern Africa. At its heart, it involves turning the soil by hand to a depth much greater than the shallow reach of mechanical ploughing. Small basins are dug with hoes, spaced across a field, each designed to catch water and concentrate fertility. Plant residues, manure, and compost are placed into the basins, and seeds are planted directly into this enriched soil.
The method is labour-intensive, but it offers advantages in fragile, rain-dependent environments. In Malawi, deep digging has been promoted in response to food shortages, land degradation, and erratic rainfall. Farmers who adopted it have often reported increases in maize yields even without fertiliser. The technique also reduces runoff and soil erosion, making it particularly useful on sloping land. Importantly, it makes productive use of human effort at times when money for inputs or machines is scarce.
From the perspective of the shrinking economy, deep digging is more than an agricultural curiosity. It represents a different logic of production — one based on human energy and local knowledge rather than imported energy and global supply chains. Where industrial agriculture seeks to reduce labour and maximise scale, deep digging accepts labour as abundant and turns it into an asset. In a world where discretionary industries shrink, releasing people from jobs in services, tourism, and retail, this redirection of human effort becomes vital.
Britain itself once relied on labour-intensive methods not unlike deep digging. Before the widespread use of tractors, spades and hoes were the tools of market gardeners and smallholders. Allotments in urban and rural settings produced a significant share of vegetables, and wartime “Dig for Victory” campaigns mobilised household labour on a massive scale. While conditions in Malawi and the UK differ greatly, the underlying principle — that human work can substitute for missing machinery or fertilisers — remains relevant.
For localism, the practice fits naturally into the vision of resilient communities. Deep digging is best suited to small plots, whether in gardens, community farms, or smallholdings. It strengthens local autonomy by reducing dependency on imported fertiliser and fuel. It also brings people together in shared work, reinforcing social bonds as well as food security. Unlike industrial farming, which empties the countryside of people, deep digging fills it with activity.
As the economy contracts, and as fossil-fuel based systems weaken, we are likely to rediscover the logic of such approaches. Malawi’s experience shows that even in tough conditions, food can be grown through ingenuity, human effort, and the careful management of water and soil. For Britain, the lesson is not to transplant the method directly, but to learn from its principles — depth of preparation, concentration of fertility, and reliance on human skill rather than distant inputs.
In the years ahead, deep digging offers both a practical technique and a metaphor. It reminds us that resilience in a shrinking economy depends not on the breadth of global trade, but on the depth of local capacity. By drawing on human labour and local knowledge, societies can create food systems that endure when industrial supports falter.
In Part One, we saw how the decline of surplus energy will steadily reduce prosperity and strain the UK’s current economic model. In Part Two, we explored why localism — shorter supply chains, more self-reliant communities, and decentralised decision-making — is the only realistic way forward.
Part Three sets out a practical vision of how localism could emerge. This is not a prediction of government policy but a reasoned projection of how the UK might adapt under pressure. It combines what is likely to happen naturally with what could happen deliberately if we prepare for the change.
1. Food: Relocalising Supply and Production
Food is the foundation of localism. As surplus energy declines, the cost of transporting food over long distances rises sharply. Supermarkets, designed for large centralised distribution, will struggle to maintain the range and volume we are used to.
How localism changes food systems:
More local farms and gardens – Small-scale, labour-intensive farms, allotments, and community gardens re-emerge as key suppliers. These farms prioritise resilience and reliability over maximising yield.
Village and Suburban-based processing – Local bakeries, dairies, butchers, and breweries return, reducing dependence on distant factories.
Reduced imports – With energy prices rising and global supply chains under strain, the UK will need to replace imported food with local production wherever possible.
Shared community storage – Small-scale cold stores, grain banks, and co-operative food hubs appear to smooth seasonal supply.
Instead of a supermarket economy dominated by 10,000-mile supply chains, food returns closer to home. This doesn’t mean empty shelves — it means fewer choices, simpler diets, and a stronger local food economy.
2. Housing: A Shift Toward Informal Development
In Part One, we saw how falling prosperity will make conventional housing models increasingly unsustainable. The formal planning system, built on continuous expansion, becomes unworkable in an energy-constrained economy.
Localism reshapes housing in three ways:
Using existing space better – Empty shops, unused offices, and older housing stock are repurposed into affordable dwellings.
Loosening planning restrictions – Over time, centralised planning loses control as people create informal housing solutions: small extensions, garden dwellings, caravans, and converted sheds.
Integration with nature – Trees and shade become part of new housing layouts, responding to rising temperatures caused by climate change.
Local communities will have more say in land use, encouraging small-scale, low-energy development rather than vast centralised estates. This marks a break from the rigid, top-down planning model of the past.
3. Energy: From Centralised Supply to Local Control
In Part One, we saw that the core challenge is not the disappearance of energy but the loss of cheap surplus energy. Centralised national grids, designed for abundant fossil fuels, will increasingly struggle to cope with volatility and cost.
Local energy strategies emerge:
Community renewables – Villages, towns, and city districts invest in their own solar, wind, and micro-hydro schemes.
Energy co-operatives – Ownership shifts from national corporations to local partnerships, giving residents a stake in generation and pricing.
Lower energy lifestyles – Localism naturally leads to less demand: fewer car journeys, more efficient homes, and smaller-scale workspaces reduce energy needs.
Energy security becomes less about maximising supply and more about minimising vulnerability. Local control brings stability where centralised systems falter.
4. Work and Employment: Rebuilding Local Economies
In Part One, we noted that discretionary sectors — retail, entertainment, and tourism — will contract as households prioritise essentials. This opens the door for a new structure of employment rooted in local production and services.
Work under localism focuses on:
Food and farming – A significant increase in agricultural and food-processing jobs, similar to the 1930s but supported by modern tools.
Repair and reuse – From clothing and furniture to electronics, repair trades grow rapidly as replacing goods becomes less affordable.
Care and services – With ageing populations and weaker central funding, communities build local care networks supported by volunteers and informal economies.
Small manufacturing – Digital tools, 3D printing, and small-scale workshops enable local production of everyday items.
Employment shifts from servicing mass consumption to maintaining essential needs. The informal economy — cash jobs, skill swaps, co-ops — becomes a core part of daily life.
5. Governance: Power Moving Closer to People
Localism is not just about production — it is about decision-making. As central government struggles to fund services, more authority inevitably moves downward.
Key governance changes:
Decentralised decision-making – Councils, parishes, and community assemblies gain real powers over land use, energy, and food systems.
Community resource management – Shared assets like local woodlands, allotments, energy grids, and water supplies are managed collectively.
Integrated informal systems – Authorities increasingly work alongside informal networks — community kitchens, co-ops, and micro-enterprises — recognising them as essential contributors.
Instead of control being concentrated in Whitehall, governance gradually becomes more distributed and adaptive.
6. The Pace of Change
Localism will not arrive overnight. It will unfold unevenly:
By necessity – In many places, it will begin when central systems fail to deliver, forcing communities to improvise.
By opportunity – In other areas, forward-looking councils and groups will plan ahead, redesigning services and supply chains in anticipation of energy constraints.
By crisis – Shocks — a spike in energy prices, food shortages, or a financial downturn — will accelerate transitions already underway.
Some communities will adapt early and thrive. Others will struggle until breakdown forces change.
The Transition Ahead
Localism is not about turning back the clock, nor is it about rejecting technology or progress. It is about aligning society with the realities of declining surplus energy. A smaller-scale, less energy-intensive economy can be fairer, more resilient, and closer to the needs of its people.
The alternative — clinging to the old model described in Part One — leads to deeper shocks, harsher inequalities, and greater instability. By embracing the principles outlined in Part Two, localism becomes a pathway to adapt deliberately rather than react desperately.
The future will be smaller, slower, and closer to home. Whether that future feels secure and liveable depends on how soon we begin shaping it.
I received the following comment in relation to one of my pieces:
Cities are the opposite of localism and cannot be made “local”. They are concentrations of the fruits of worldwide industrialism and cannot stand on their own. In the rich world, over 80% of people live in cities. They will do everything they can to keep them liveable as long as possible and when cities are no longer liveable they will die.
I believe that localism will apply to cities, but in a different way from the countryside.
Localism is not a choice. It will happen as the economy contracts. Supply chains will shorten. Imports will fall. The industrial systems that feed and support cities will become less reliable.
In villages, localism will feel positive. Small shops and services will return. Food will be grown nearby. People will rely more on their neighbours and less on distant suppliers. Communities will adapt.
In cities, the change will be harder. Large populations depend on constant supplies. When these fail, people will have to reorganise how they live. We are likely to see:
Growing pressure on food, water, and energy.
New sharing and trading networks within neighbourhoods.
More urban farming, using gardens, rooftops, and open spaces.
As a first step to moving out some will commute out to farming and food related activities out-of-town..
Some cities will manage the transition. Others may struggle and decline. Localism in cities will not mean independence but survival through smaller, self-supporting communities.
The countryside and the city will move in the same direction but at different speeds. Rural areas will regain more control and resilience. Urban areas will face harder choices. Both will be shaped by the same shift – from a global industrial economy to smaller, place-based systems.
Across Britain, a quiet transformation is underway. Behind the headlines of recession, redundancy, and rural decline, a new economic relationship is forming between farmers in distress and town-dwellers out of work. It is modest, improvised, and mostly unrecognised, but it may lead to a more resilient future.
In the traditional countryside, many farmers are in agony. Margins are shrinking, costs are rising, and weather patterns are becoming extreme. Markets are volatile and dominated by supermarkets, middlemen, and distant regulations. For thousands of small and mid-sized farms, survival now means selling off pieces of land or going deeper into debt. Younger generations are leaving, and many older farmers have no one to hand their holdings to.
At the same time, in towns and suburbs, the collapse of the consumer economy is creating a new kind of displacement. As discretionary industries shrink—retail, hospitality, media, and professional services—people are being made redundant. For some, the shift is manageable. For many, it is not. Unable to find work, pay rent, or afford urban life, many are looking to the countryside for something more elemental: a place to live modestly and work the land.
Often, this begins with a conversation. A would-be smallholder approaches a farmer, asking to buy or lease a small piece of ground—perhaps half an acre, sometimes less. The land may be marginal, steep, or underused. The arrangement is usually informal. What the buyer wants is not profit but subsistence—a polytunnel, a few chickens, some vegetables, and a basic shelter—a life pared down to essentials.
Some farmers are saying yes.
A New Rural Relationship
A new rural economy is being born in these small, informal agreements. It doesn’t conform to the categories used by planners or economists. It is not focused on exports or yields per hectare. It is based on need, trust, and mutual benefit.
For the farmer, selling or leasing a corner of land can provide ready cash or reliable help. For the newcomer, it offers a foothold, a chance to become self-reliant in a world where conventional opportunities are drying up. Sometimes rent is paid. Sometimes it is exchanged for labour—fencing, lambing, hedge-laying. Tools and skills are shared. Fences are repaired. Sheds are re-roofed.
This is not the romantic ruralism of television or glossy magazines. It is post-industrial agriculture: human-scale, low-energy, and largely informal. It depends more on wheelbarrows than tractors, and more on hand tools than apps. It’s a return to practicality born not of nostalgia but of necessity.
Working the Edges
The work happens in the gaps—on field edges, neglected paddocks, and forgotten orchards. Produce is grown for home use or sold at the gate. Water may be harvested, power improvised, and structures made from salvaged materials. Compost toilets and solar showers are standard. There is little money, but much utility.
Increasingly, these smallholders form micro-communities. Advice is shared. Seeds are swapped. Some even coordinate planting and harvesting, or set up informal food exchanges. The work is hard, but purposeful. Children grow up with soil on their hands. Grandparents find new dignity in shared labour. Life slows, but deepens.
In time, these scattered plots may connect into a rural patchwork of resilience: not villages in the traditional sense, but networks of subsistence—places where people meet their own needs, and each other’s, without relying on distant systems that are no longer dependable.
The Planning Puzzle
This transition is not without tension. Planning law in the UK remains rooted in the industrial and post-war assumption that rural land must be tightly controlled, protected from “inappropriate development.” Permanent living on farmland is usually prohibited unless the occupant is engaged in commercial-scale agriculture.
But the present does not need to fit the logic of the past. If people cannot afford to live in cities and farms can no longer afford to operate at scale, surely there is wisdom in allowing new forms of habitation and land use, especially when they are modest, low-impact, and essential to wellbeing.
Local authorities face a stark choice: enforce old rules that exclude new livelihoods, or begin to recognise that a shift is underway—and find ways to support it. A more permissive, humane, and adaptive planning framework could allow thousands of people to live and work on the land, relieving pressure on housing, food supply, and social support systems.
An Unlikely Alliance
This evolving partnership—between farmers with too much land and workers with none—may be one of the most hopeful developments in Britain’s economic landscape. It is not driven by ideology or investment. It is rooted in the soil, the seasons, and the search for meaning and survival.
Farmers have long been told to “get big or get out.” But some are now choosing a third path: to get local. To become stewards of change rather than victims of it. By allowing smallholders onto their land, they may secure their own futures—not through subsidies or speculation, but through solidarity.
And for those arriving from town, this isn’t a retreat from society—it’s a rebuilding of it, one raised bed and shared spade at a time.
As the old economy buckles under its own weight, a lighter, smaller, slower one is taking root. You won’t see it in GDP figures. But you might see it at the end of a farm track, where someone is putting in a gate, planting beans, and beginning again.
