Fruit and vegetables are essential components of a healthy diet, but the resilience of their provision to UK citizens over coming years is at high risk. We have a ‘just-in-time’ lean inventory and delivery system with high import dependency that is increasingly vulnerable to supply chain disruption. There are threats to domestic production such as climate change, labour disruption and pollinator loss. We also currently rely extensively on imports, and both offshore and domestic horticultural production are susceptible to a range of complex cascading risks spanning political, economic, social, technological, legal/regulatory, climate and environmental domains.

This transdisciplinary project involves continuing dialogue with key policy and industry partners in problem formulation, scenario development and the design of interventions to build resilience. We hope this timely and critical investment will lead to genuine improvement in the resilience of UK fruit and vegetable provision.

The Enhancing transformative resilience of fruit & veg provision for the UK population project received funding from the from the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in the Strengthening the resilience of the UK food system call.