From ground to table: The role of local government in local food and drink supply chains

Global events have caused a range of issues in the food system, resulting in inflation and food insecurity. This has had an impact on local authority ambitions to support communities through the cost of living challenges, delivering net zero and public health objectives, and achieve local jobs, growth and prosperity ambitions. Many areas are looking at how to provide place leadership to support local food and drink supply chains and reduce future instability.

Local authorities have adopted different approaches to local food and drink supply chains, often reflecting their physical geography, as well as whether areas are city regions, rural, coastal, market towns and non-metropolitan areas greater place leadership role in supporting the local food and drink supply chains. This report is an addendum to the LGA’s Green Job Framework and is intended to provide good practice case studies for local authorities who have interest in supporting local food and drink supply chains.

There is not a one size fit all approach by local government to defining what a local food and drink supply chain is. This can be dependent on several factors, including local geography which determines what type and volume of produce is produced in an area due to being a rural, coastal or urban/non-metropolitan area. Existing food, retail, tourism and hospitality sectors that already exist in a local economy can also determine local government’s role.  

For this report, we take the role of local government in strengthening the local food and drink supply chain to mean, local government and their partners’ ambition to reduce the travelling distance of food and drink from ground/sea to plate, by growing local businesses and delivering jobs in food and drink related sectors. 

Local government has historically taken different approaches to strengthening the local food and drink supply chains. Some councils have historically made food security a key priority of their growth and skills strategies, while many others have used Local Enterprise Partnership integration and the management of growth funding as an opportunity to increase activity in this area. Some areas have also developed robust food partnerships which brings together food and drink related supply chains, cost-of-living and public health issues.  

Food and drink security and growth are key to the new government’s missions. Under the Make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower Mission, the government “recognise that food security is national security” and intends to “set a target for half of all food purchased across the public sector to be locally produced or certified to a higher environmental standard”. Many local authorities will be developing and strengthening their local food and drink supply chains, as well as using their purchasing power, such as school meals, to achieve this ambition. We are also expecting the government to publish a land use framework in tandem with a spatial energy plan in the future. 

The government’s mission-based approach to Kickstart Economic Growth sets out ambitions to grow businesses, supporting people into work and infrastructure investment, which bolsters the local food and drink supply chains will help achieve this. This ambition is intended to be delivered through partnerships with businesses, devolution and a strengthened relationship between national and local government. It will also feature in the development of some Local Growth Plans. Local government in their role as place leaders are essential in realising this ambition.  

This report sets out some of the key challenges and barriers to strengthening local food and drink supply chains. We have undertaken desk top research and spoken to local authorities to identify the following policy challenges that will need to be improve food security. The challenges are vast, and therefore we have focused on skills and workforce and economic growth and prosperity. 

The food and drink sector face multiple challenges in developing the workforce needed to strengthen local food and drink supply chains. The challenges relate to a range of factors throughout the food supply chain, such as seasonal work, competition between sectors, ageing workforce profiles and the impact of food supply chains instability. We have identified some of the following workforce challenges: 

• Skills gaps in multiple agriculture, land-based and food and drink service related sectors: The Food and Drink Federation estimate that there are at least 500,000 vacancies across the UK, including in agriculture, HGV drivers and hospitality sector. Their research found that there are numerous skill shortages and challenges, including an ageing workforce, competition between sectors, and seasonal and geographical challenges of the sector. 
• Challenges of attracting younger people in agriculture land management and nature careers: Analysis from the census found ‘farmer’ having one of the oldest age profiles, with 42 per cent over the age of 60, while only 11 per cent were under 30. The profile of farm workers, who do the bulk of the physical labour, are younger with 23 per cent of the workforce under 25. The age profile of farmers could mean challenges in the future for workforce demands, with additional challenges of barriers to entry due to land ownership. 
• Mental health of farming communities: Food insecurity has an impact on the mental health of the farming community. This can have a long-term impact on farming and maintaining the workforce supply chain. Research by the Farm Safety Foundation found that 95 per cent of farmers under the age of 40 said mental health is the biggest hidden problem facing farmers today, in part caused by the uncertainty of external factors and the challenges of food security. 

These workforce challenges are complex and stabilising the local food system is first needed to address some of these issues. It will need a holistic, place-based approaches to ensure agriculture, horticulture, land management and arboriculture skill gaps are addressed, as well as supporting the development of the workforce for hospitality, tourism and retail sectors.  

The LGA’s Green Jobs Framework shows how the skills system can be led to address workforce challenges to deliver net zero and a green economy, This supplements Work Local, which shows how an integrated, devolved employment and skills system can be used to tackle some of these issues. Local government can play a role in supporting the coordination of funding and strategy to help skills and employment in the food and drink sector, as well as bringing together other food-related activities, such as cost-of-living, climate adaptation and public health.  

Local government with ambitions to grow local food and drink sectors have told us the funding landscape and individual government programmes are short-term and do not provide the flexibility nor capacity to support these seasonal sectors. Local government have told us: 

• Funding is short term: Competitive short-term funding pots do not enable local government and their partners to plan and invest in support for businesses to strengthen local food and drink supply chains. The growth funding landscape needs to encourage opportunities to scale up provision that can align with seasonal food production. Wider growth funding, such as the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) was annual allocations, and Levelling Up funding was allocated by competition. This makes it challenging for councils to plan and deliver initiatives that will help local food and drink supply chains prosper. 
• Capacity building in infrastructure investment and agriculture sector: Funding streams such as the Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) and Future Farming Resilience Fund have been driven by local government and their partners. Some councils found the introduction of funding was done quickly without national government providing consistent engagement and support to build the capacity within local government to deliver such measures. For example, the REPF is a two-year fund for capital investment to support diversification, it does not take into account the time needed to obtain planning permission. 
• More initiatives for businesses and other organisations to engage with wider place-based activity: Short-termism of growth funding has made it hard for councils to fully engage the wide-ranging business sector.  Incentives are needed to encourage businesses and other partners to participate in local schemes to develop the local food and drink supply chain. 

Enabling local government to develop and coordinate place-based partnerships, funded through multi-annual, flexible, long-term funding, will provide the stability needed to develop local food and drink supply chains. With the right time and funding, partnerships at the local level have the potential to deliver key capital food infrastructure investments and farming diversification measures, as well as secure local businesses participation of wider food security related activity.  

Local government can provide the leadership locally to support and enable the food sector to grow, utilising the experience of partners. We have identified good practice from councils who have a long-term relationship with the food and agricultural sectors, as well as initiatives that councils who have ambitions to develop the sector.  

Local government can be place-leaders and bring together the partners, resources and initiatives to strengthen the local food supply chain. For there to be a strong national and local partnership in food security, there needs to be a cross-departmental approach. This is to ensure consistency and coherence across schemes, funding and initiatives relating to land use, farming, skills, business support and international trade, as well as providing flexibility in policy and funding to embed food and drink sectors into local strategies. Local government should be able to engage through a single channel with national government on food security related activity. 

In exchange for simpler engagement with national government, local government can play a role in creating a point of contact for government to introduce initiatives and funding to support a local place in developing food security and coordinate activity, building partnerships related to the local food and drink supply chain. This in turn will help reduce duplication of initiatives and funding. 

To ensure all partners collaborate effectively there needs to be resources to coordinate activity and the potential to monitor activity and impact. This needs to be built in with any future funding streams, for example, capital funding streams have not always provided revenue to build capacity. 

There are many workforce challenges we have previously identified from agriculture and land-based jobs to retail and hospitality. It is essential there is place leadership and coordination to match the training provision and resources available to tackle these skills challenges. Local government cannot do this alone and will need to work with a range of partners, including agriculture schools and skill providers, retail industry representatives and industry bodies. 

Through both business support function and wider strategic economic priorities, councils can support local food providers and businesses, strengthening the local food supply chain to make available more local produce.  

The leadership role councils play can provide opportunities to develop initiatives to increase the demand for locally produced food. This can be done through procurement processes, but also encourage residents to use retail options with locally sourced food. 

Councils are creating opportunities to produce food and drink locally, while also utilising this to develop local skills and industries such as tourism and hospitality, with the ambition to maintain income locally. 

Local government, as local leaders, are in a position to utilise their communities to contribute to strengthening local supply chains in innovative ways. This enables places to bring together other components, such as climate adaptation and net zero in how they design their communities and places. This shows areas without huge farming communities can contribute to strengthening the food supply chain.