Climate crisis: UK’s fruit and vegetables increasingly imported from environmentally vulnerable countries

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The availability of fruit and vegetables grown in the UK is declining, with the country becoming increasingly reliant on imports from countries vulnerable to the climate crisis, scientists have warned.

A research team led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), have called for a “radical rethink” of the UK’s trade strategies to ensure people continue to have access to fruit and vegetables - key components of a healthy diet.

The work used open-source data on food trade from 1987-2013, and revealed the domestic contribution to total fruit and vegetable supply in the UK collapsed from 42 per cent in 1987 to just 22 per cent by 2013.