Feeding Britain: Can Our Best Food Producers Deliver?

October 24, 2025·42 min·3 clips

Professor Tim Lang reveals there's no plan for UK food security amid rising war risks and grey zone tactics.

Food security sets the route. The presenter starts with a plain question: how does the UK keep eating through conflicts, floods, droughts and pandemics? Three producers offer the working answer. They are finalists in this year's BBC Food and Farming Awards, nominated by listeners and visited with Hugh Fernley Whittingstall. The journey stays grounded. Yorkshire, Cumbria and Cambridgeshire are not just stops on a map. Each place asks whether excellent food can also make the system sturdier. The mood is serious without going flat. Lord Toby Harris, Professor Tim Lang and Henry Dimbleby give the public stakes before the programme moves back to producers. Then bread takes over. At the sourdough bakery, organic choices and care for growers sit beside tasters and a lively sense of curiosity. The pleasures are wonderfully specific. Chocolate malt is not confectionery; it is very dark roasted brewer's barley, giving bread a stout-like depth. The judges sound properly tempted. The scene keeps its humour too, especially when Sheila is told she has talked all journey about one sourdough. Customers make the point less abstract. One followed the baker after he moved, travelling twelve miles because the bread was still worth it. Price gets noticed. A four-pound loaf is named, then defended as skilled work that would cost far more to copy badly at home. The ceremony is still to come. By ending with the November 18 award event in Bristol, the programme leaves both the winner and the bigger food-security question open.

As heard by us

Food security feels less abstract when it is measured in sourdough, roasted malt and a customer willing to drive 12 miles for bread.

Feeding Britain turns food security from a policy phrase into something you can taste. The Food Programme follows three BBC Food and Farming Awards finalists on a judging trip through Yorkshire, Cumbria and Cambridgeshire, with conflicts, floods, droughts and pandemics hanging…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Follow Britain's food security debate through three BBC Food and Farming Awards finalists and a judge's journey across Yorkshire, Cumbria, and Cambridgeshire.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Food Programme