You might think that, as a country, we have had our fair share of food security wobbles over the last few years: first with pre-Brexit panic, and the hoarding that went along with it, and then the empty supermarket shelves that few of us will forget during the height of the pandemic. But this time, the call is coming from inside the house: British farmers are threatening to stop supplying supermarkets in protest against the government’s plans to apply inheritance tax to family farms.

What we might be able to cook in a few weeks is as expansive as ‘almost anything’ or as limited as ‘almost nothing’

What does that mean for the average person doing the weekly shop? Are we returning to the days of rationed eggs and powdered milk? Not quite. The way we eat has changed: globalisation is great for the consumer – how wonderful it is to live in an age where we live in the United Kingdom but can buy beautiful mangoes in the supermarket, or know what yuzu tastes like? – but it has skewed how we think about food. We’re more disconnected from what is actually grown in our own country, and we’ve lost any expectation of eating seasonally.

It’s not so good for the farmers, either, as these cheaper imports drive down the price that British producers can demand for their food. Even before the outcry against the family farm tax, farmers were protesting against supermarkets’........

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