How empty shelves in a Shetland Tesco are a warning about the fragility of UK’s food supplies

“The next time someone tells you that we can rely solely on imports for our food needs, show them these pictures.”

Politicians sometimes have the ill fortune of going ‘viral’ for the wrong reasons. This past weekend, I was surprised to find myself instead going (mildly) viral on Facebook for the right reasons, after posting that message and a photo of the empty shelves in the Lerwick Tesco in Shetland following several days of storms stopping the ferries.

For the avoidance of doubt, my intention was not to single out Tesco (other stores and supermarkets are available). The point, instead, was about how we consider food security and food supplies in our country.

The Northern Isles are island communities, just as the UK is an island nation. Our supermarkets import much of our food from the UK mainland, which makes us that little bit more vulnerable when disruption hits, as it has done in recent days.

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Empty shelves in Lerwick's Tesco after storms prevented ships from sailing | Alistair Carmichael

Shetland pineapple?

We manage in the Northern Isles because we are a resilient community – and because this is not our first rodeo. We are accustomed to the effects of winter storms, and we have local producers of fresh milk, bread and the like, who can step up when needed.

There are, of course, limits to the gaps that can be filled by local farmers. The Orkney avocado crop is some years away yet, while the Shetland pineapple is still in the early stages of research and development.

When you consider that the UK as a whole imports 85 per cent of our fresh fruit, you begin to see why a few days of disrupted ferries means bare shelves in isles’ supermarkets.

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Not every part of the country is as used to these sorts of disruptions as we are or would be as tolerant of them as we have learned to be. I make no criticisms of city dwellers but I suspect that if every supermarket in London were empty of fresh fruit and vegetables, the reaction would be less ‘mildly popular Facebook post’ and more ‘front page of every newspaper’.

The question then is how we respond to these warning signs. If the international turmoil of recent days and years tells us anything, it is that we need more security at home, including food security.

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Scenes like these in mainland UK shops would be headline news | Alistair Carmichael

Importance of European allies

One strand of building up our food security comes through working more closely with our near neighbours, friends and allies in Europe. There will always be food that we cannot produce ourselves, so we would be wise to stay close to trustworthy countries who can.

It also must come through supporting our local farmers and, above all, by supporting them to do what they do best, which is producing food. That is something that has gone neglected for too long by our governments, even as our neighbours in the EU have begun to retrench support for domestic food production as a public good.

These issues are not going away and the time in which to act on them is not as long as our governments might like to think. The next time I am told that we can rely solely on imports for our food security, either in the isles or across the UK, I shall be thinking of those empty shelves.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland