In recent years governments in many parts of the world have begun to pay particular attention to a collision of stress factors surrounding food security. As expanding economies in Asia and South America come to demand better nutritional standards, as climatic extremes and uncertainties threaten crops, and as population growth and warfare continue to place great strains on food supplies in much of Africa and Asia, so the western democracies have been forced to look carefully at their policy responses. Biophysical and technological emphases (e.g. GM foods) have been advanced to boost food production and its availability. But at the same time there has also been a growing discourse aimed at offering more localised and sustainable solutions to food production which prioritise local knowledge and its setting within particular social, economic and environmental conditions.

Whatever the solutions may be, there is no doubting the changes now taking place in international food supply chains: the great food price increases of 2008 in the UK certainly confirmed this, when wheat prices climbed over the 12 months to March by 130 per cent. The historical extent of British national food self-sufficiency has fluctuated over time, from above 60 per cent during most of the nineteenth century, down to 30–50 per cent in the 1930s–1950s and to 60 per cent at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The lowest point, then, comes at the period addressed in this present volume.

The question of self-sufficiency, of course, is closely related to government policies on food supply, testified to by historical debates over free trade, empire preference, import quotas and the like. Degrees of government intervention vary over time, as do the manner and processes involved, and there has been a waxing and waning in most countries depending on their changing economic, political or ideological positions. The question of food security at no time, of course, takes on greater urgency than in time of worsening international conflict and war.

This book looks particularly at the crisis confronting Britain in the Second World War as her previous reliance on food imports was threatened by German U-boat wolf packs in the Atlantic, arguably the greatest crisis ever facing this country in terms of food supply.