It begins subtly. A few wildflower meadows. Uncut hedgerows. Solar panels where sheep once grazed. These signs of Britain’s climate ambition, backed by a legally binding net zero target for 2050, are easy to celebrate. They suggest progress, responsibility, and leadership. However, beneath this greening surface lies a contradiction: as Britain reduces its own emissions to meet net zero targets, it increasingly relies on imported food from countries already struggling to sustain their own agricultural systems.
Morocco is crucial for our winter pantry
Morocco is one such country. Over the past two decades, it has become a crucial winter pantry for the UK, delivering strawberries in February, cherry tomatoes in January, and courgettes all year round. This did not happen by accident. In 2008, Morocco launched the Green Morocco Plan, modernising its agriculture to serve European demand. Nowhere was this more evident than in Souss-Massa, a semi-arid region south of Agadir that was transformed into a sea of greenhouses.
But the water for crops is running out
The exports have flowed. So has the water and it is running out. The Souss-Massa aquifer, which took millennia to form, has dropped by up to 40 metres in some areas. Farmers now turn to desalination, which is expensive, energy-intensive, and out of reach for many smallholders. A 2022 report found that more than 60% of small farmers in the region identified water scarcity as their greatest threat. Meanwhile, in early 2023, Morocco exported over 90,000 tonnes of tomatoes to the UK in just three months.
This quiet trade-off is rarely acknowledged. Britain rewilds. Morocco depletes. British emissions fall. Moroccan aquifers drop. On the UK’s carbon balance sheet, a tomato grown in Morocco and flown in has no domestic cost. In reality, however, the ecological burden has not disappeared. It has simply been moved.
Food production at home loses to climate policy
This pattern is also visible at home. Within Britain, climate policy has increasingly de-emphasised food production in favour of carbon-focused land use. After Brexit, the UK replaced the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy with the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS), which is designed to reward farmers for delivering “public goods” such as biodiversity and carbon storage. In theory, this is a progressive shift. In practice, it has been chaotic.
Application processes are opaque. Payments are inconsistent. Many small and mid-sized farmers have withdrawn from the scheme or left farming altogether. Direct subsidies for food production have vanished, and no adequate replacements have been introduced. Between 2021 and 2023, UK vegetable production dropped by 6.40 %. Greenhouses sit idle. Dairy herds are disappearing.
Wood pellet burning and bioenergy crops
At the same time, the UK’s climate funding has heavily favoured biomass energy, most notably at Drax, a North Yorkshire power station that burns imported wood pellets. Drax receives over £800 million in subsidies each year. According to carbon accounting rules, biomass is treated as zero-emission, since the trees burned are assumed to regrow elsewhere. However, that assumption does not hold up to scrutiny. Regrowth takes decades, emissions happen immediately, and British landscapes are increasingly shaped by incentives that favour theoretical carbon gains over tangible food resilience.
While cropland shrinks, more land is being used for bioenergy crops such as miscanthus and willow. These qualify for environmental payments but do not feed anyone. A hectare of turnips grown for food may not qualify for support. A hectare of willow grown for biomass usually does.
This is not coherent policy. It is carbon accounting theatre.
A drought in Morocco hit our winter tomato supply
The fragility of this system was exposed in early 2023 when a severe drought hit Morocco. Tomato exports to the UK were temporarily suspended. Within days, supermarkets began rationing. Shelves were empty. Headlines asked where the salad had gone. A regional climate event, thousands of miles away, had immediate consequences for British households.
It was not an anomaly. It was a warning.
Today’s food system depends on seamless, just-in-time imports from climate-stressed regions such as Morocco, Spain, and Kenya. However, the world is becoming less predictable. Droughts last longer. Sea freight costs rise. Labour shortages deepen. When international suppliers falter, Britain’s lack of domestic production provides no buffer. As ever, the poorest households, which already spend a greater share of income on food, feel the volatility most.
This is not simply a supply chain issue. It is a justice issue.
Imported food is climate neutral on our spreadsheets
On the UK’s official carbon spreadsheet, imported food is considered clean. The emissions happen abroad, so they do not count. This is the logic of international carbon accounting, and it enables wealthy nations to claim climate progress while quietly outsourcing environmental degradation to others. A rewilded dairy farm in Yorkshire lowers UK methane. However, the milk still comes from Ireland or France. A British field lies fallow for carbon credits, while courgettes are flown in from Morocco. The numbers look good, but the reality is distorted.
Environmental researchers refer to this pattern as climate colonialism: shifting the burdens of climate adaptation and resource use onto poorer nations, while retaining the benefits. This is not a metaphor. It is a structural feature of the global economy, and one that rewards countries for cutting visible emissions while ignoring the hidden costs embedded in trade.
Souss-Massa carries our net zero burden
In Souss-Massa, the depletion is not abstract. Every tonne of tomatoes grown for British supermarkets consumes water that local communities may never get back. Desalination is now used as a stopgap, but it consumes vast amounts of energy, often produced using fossil fuels. The emissions stay in Morocco. The convenience remains in Britain.
Smallholders are largely excluded from this system. They face rising costs, shrinking yields, and no access to supermarket contracts. The system rewards volume, not sustainability. Profitability, not resilience. For many of these farmers, the future means either drought or departure.
A global pattern, not a British exception
Britain is not uniquely guilty in this dynamic; it is simply a clear example. Across the developed world, wealthy nations have learned to green their own backyards while outsourcing the mess. France imports vegetables from North Africa. Germany relies on solar panel components from regions with coal-heavy grids. The Netherlands, despite its agricultural fame, depends heavily on water-stressed overseas inputs.
This is not to dilute Britain’s responsibility. Quite the opposite. It highlights how embedded these contradictions are in the global economy, and how urgent it is for richer countries to confront the full consequences of their consumption. Net zero targets must account not just for emissions at home, but for the pressure they displace abroad.
Who grows the food?
Who bears the environmental cost?
Whose resilience is sacrificed so that another country can meet its targets?
Britain made net zero a problem for other countries
If Britain’s net zero policy continues to treat food as someone else’s problem, it will ultimately fail in its broader mission. Real sustainability requires more than planting trees and building wind farms. It requires ensuring that the food we eat, and the water used to grow it, are part of the climate equation.
So what would coherence look like?
It begins by rejecting the idea that food production and environmental protection are opposites. In fact, they are deeply linked. Regenerative farming, protected cropping, and mixed-use landscapes can grow food and sequester carbon. Passive greenhouses and vertical farms can reduce reliance on winter imports. However, they need investment, just as biomass does. And they need to be prioritised, not treated as fringe experiments.
Trade must also be rethought. If Britain depends on Moroccan produce, it should help Morocco adapt, rather than just extract. This means supporting water-efficient agriculture abroad, reforming trade deals to favour ecological sustainability, and sharing climate finance beyond the energy sector. It means counting not only carbon emitted, but also carbon displaced.
Without this shift, Britain’s net zero strategy will remain a mirage: impressive from a distance, but fragile under pressure.
Hitting targets should be less important than reality
To lead on climate does not only mean hitting targets. It means ensuring that those targets reflect reality. A country cannot be considered sustainable if it cannot grow a substantial share of its own food. Nor can it claim climate ambition while ignoring the pressures it exports to others.
Net zero must be reframed, not as a number to reach, but as a system to build. A system that holds together when tested. One that values integrity rather than optics. One that recognises that when the shelves start to empty, spreadsheets will not feed us.
Not just less carbon. More coherence.
