What should Andy Burnham do about food?

Andy Burnham has walked into Number 10 with a long list of things he means to fix: housing, energy, water, social care, transport. It is a serious list, and a popular one. But the thing squeezing British households harder than almost anything else right now is the price of food. The Food and Drink Federation now forecasts food inflation could reach over 9% by the end of the year, driven in large part by the war in the Middle East and its impact on global energy and shipping.

Closer to home, this summer saw thousands of farmers gather at the Groundswell festival in Hertfordshire. The frustration many of them carry was hard to ignore - they are certainly not making big profits as food prices climb. Theirs is the flip side of the same crisis. Food is where the cost of living and the changing climate collide, and farmers feel it first. Increasingly volatile weather is already affecting harvests and contributing to price pressures, while many farms are buckling under rising costs and squeezed margins of their own, whilst lacking the investment in planning and infrastructure such as reservoirs that could help them manage changing weather patterns.

Take something as basic as the 80% of fresh fruit and 50% of vegetables we import. Long, complex supply chains routed through countries increasingly exposed to climate and geopolitical shocks leave us doubly exposed: to higher prices on the shelf, and to worse farmgate prices for the farmers and growers who supply them. Homegrown produce is more insulated from these shocks, but too much of it still depends on imported inputs, fertiliser and animal feed - so the whole system stays hostage to global volatility.

Britain’s own supply chains aren’t helping either. Unfair dealings by supermarkets and manufacturers, late cancellations and a long chain of middlemen mean farmers are often left with meagre pennies in the pound for the food they grow. Analysis for Sustain on profit distribution across the food supply chain lays bare just how achingly thin those margins have become. We need supply chains and regulation that are built around farmers, not despite them, and that strengthen rather than undercut resilient regional food systems.

Burnham has so far not signalled much appetite for intervening in food supply chains in the way he says he will for energy or water. But the same fragility he wants to fix there runs straight through our food system too - and a government serious about the cost of living can’t keep treating farming livelihoods, natural resources and our daily food as essentials that can be secured through market forces alone.

This is the in-tray Burnham inherits. The Government’s newly published Farming Roadmap 2050 sets out a 25-year vision for the sector, but there are still gaping holes around how it connects sustainable farming to issues like healthy diets and affordability. And the long-promised Food Strategy, the one vehicle that could join up farming with the cost of living, public health, nature and the climate, is still in development. Burnham doesn't need to start from scratch. He needs to pick these strategies up, finish them properly, and put the Food Strategy on a statutory footing through a Good Food Bill, so its ambitions carry the force of law rather than being the kind of promise that quietly slips down the priority list. That would give food the same permanence as the other crises he's promised to fix.

If the new Prime Minister wants a reset that reaches everybody in Britain, food cannot be the afterthought it has so persistently been in British politics. The job of the new Prime Minister must be to back British farmers, lead the green transition, make sure farmers get a fair price for what they grow, and to champion the Government’s own Food Strategy so that food becomes part of the answer to the cost of living - not just another bill people can’t afford to pay.