We’re letting big corporations gamble with our lives. Act now, or the food could run out

## Summary
‘When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.’ Composite: intek1/Getty Images/iStockphoto View image in fullscreen ‘When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.’ Composite: intek1/Getty Images/iStockphoto We’re letting big corporations gamble with our lives. Act now, or the food could run out George Monbiot The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is T he fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. The same factors that would have brought down the financial system, were it not for a bailout amounting to trillions of dollars, now threaten to bring down the food system. When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.

## Article Content
‘When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.’
Composite: intek1/Getty Images/iStockphoto
View image in fullscreen
‘When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.’
Composite: intek1/Getty Images/iStockphoto
We’re letting big corporations gamble with our lives. Act now, or the food could run out
George Monbiot
The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is
T
he fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be. But the war with
Iran
is just the right kind of event.
Drawing
on
years
of
scientific data
, I’ve been arguing for some time that this risk exists – and that governments are completely unprepared for it. In 2023, I
made a submission
to a parliamentary inquiry into
environmental change and food security
, with a vast list of references. Called as a witness, I spent
much of the time explaining
that the issue was much wider than the inquiry’s scope.
While some MPs got it, governments as a whole simply don’t seem to understand what we’re facing. It’s this: the global food system is systemically fragile in the same way that the global financial system was before the 2008 crash.
It’s easy to see potential vulnerabilities, such as a
fertiliser supply crunch
caused by the closure of the strait of Hormuz, or
harvest failures
caused by climate breakdown. But these are not the thing itself. They are disruptions of the kind that might trigger the thing. The thing itself is the entire system sliding off a cliff. The same factors that would have brought down the financial system, were it not for a bailout amounting to trillions of dollars, now threaten to bring down the food system.
Recent data suggests that every part of this system is now
highly concentrated
in the hands of a few corporations, which have
been consolidating
both vertically and horizontally. One recent study
found that
the US food system has “consolidated nearly twice as much as the overall economic system”. Some of these corporations, diversifying into financial products, now
look more like banks
than commodity traders, but without the same level of regulation. They might claim that financialisation helps them hedge against risk, but as
one paper remarks
, “it is nearly impossible to differentiate between hedging and speculating.” We don’t know how exposed to risk they might be, but it
doesn’t look great
. Partly through their influence, the world has shifted towards a
“global standard diet”
, supplied by the global standard farm.
These vulnerabilities are exacerbated by the use of just-in-time supply chains and the funnelling of much of the world’s trade through a number of chokepoints.
Some people
have
long warned
that the strait of Hormuz, alongside the Suez canal, Turkish straits, Panama canal and straits of Malacca, are critical chokepoints, whose obstruction would threaten the flow of food, fertiliser, fuel and other crucial agricultural commodities. A year ago,
I listed
“military attacks on … straits and canals” as a major interruption risk exacerbated by Donald Trump’s antics. The thought that Houthi rebels in Yemen, backed by the Iranian government, might simultaneously resume their attacks on Red Sea shipping keeps me awake at night.
What all this means is a reduction in the key elements of systemic resilience: diversity, redundancy (a system’s spare capacity), modularity (its degree of compartmentalisation), backup (other ways of providing food), asynchronicity (which prevents shocks suddenly compounding) and circuit breakers (mostly in the form of effective regulation). A loss of any one of these properties should be a flashing red light. But the whole dashboard is now lit up.
When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down. The collapse of one corporation? The simultaneous closure of two or more chokepoints? A major IT outage? A severe climate event coinciding with a geopolitical crisis? The next step could be
contagious bankruptcy and cascading failure
across sectors. Then … well, it’s beyond imagination. The chain between seller and buyer – as fundamental to our food supply as the production of food itself – could suddenly snap. Shelves would clear as people panic-bought. Crops would rot in fields, silos or ports. Rebooting a system whose financial architecture has imploded might prove impossible on the timescale required to prevent mass starvation. As complex societies, we’re looking at a potential termination event.
We know what needs to happen: break up the big corporations; bring the system under proper regulatory control;
diversify our diets
and their
means of production
; reduce our dependenc

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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- What all this means is a reduction in the key elements of systemic resilience: diversity, redundancy (a system’s spare capacity), modularity (its degree of compartmentalisation), backup (other ways of providing food), asynchronicity (which prevents shocks suddenly compounding) and circuit breakers (mostly in the form of effective regulation).

### Areas for Consideration
- But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system.
- Drawing on years of scientific data , I’ve been arguing for some time that this risk exists – and that governments are completely unprepared for it.
- Called as a witness, I spent much of the time explaining that the issue was much wider than the inquiry’s scope.

### Implications
- ‘When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.’ Composite: intek1/Getty Images/iStockphoto View image in fullscreen ‘When a system has lost its resilience, it’s hard to predict just how and when it could go down.’ Composite: intek1/Getty Images/iStockphoto We’re letting big corporations gamble with our lives.
- Act now, or the food could run out George Monbiot The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is T he fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right.
- We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be.
- In 2023, I made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into environmental change and food security , with a vast list of references.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers system, food, global topics. Notable strengths include discussion of system. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 1199.