In a speech delivered as the new Labour government reached its first 100 days, Minister McNeill argued that the next hunger emergency should be read as a systems warning, not only as a humanitarian tragedy. Speaking to ODI Global, Action Against Hunger and Shabaka, McNeill set out a picture of overlapping pressure points: emergency food insecurity was already severe in Sudan, Somalia and Yemen; disruption around the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea was raising the cost of moving fuel and fertiliser; high debt was limiting how far governments could respond; and the World Food Programme was already overstretched. The speech treated those pressures as connected rather than coincidental. A powerful El Niño was building, harvests were under threat across the Horn of Africa and beyond, and countries already carrying conflict or debt were likely to be hit first and hardest. The useful shift was this: hunger was framed not as a distant emergency to be managed later, but as an early sign that climate risk, ecosystem stress and geopolitics were already colliding.

McNeill’s central argument was that food security should sit at the centre of how governments think about resilience. In the speech, food was described as climate security, health security, economic security and human security all at once. That matters because it links a failed harvest in East Africa, a disrupted shipping lane in the Gulf and a pricier supermarket basket in Britain as parts of the same story rather than separate headlines. The UK Nature Security Assessment, cited in the speech, pushed the same point. Britain’s resilience depends on natural systems far beyond its own borders. Forests, soils, freshwater systems and oceans help shape rainfall, water availability and growing conditions across major agricultural regions. McNeill pointed to the Congo Basin as one example: if that rainforest declines, food production across the Sahel falls with it. In that reading, protecting ecosystems is not an optional add-on to food policy. It is part of keeping harvests, trade flows and prices more stable.

From there, the speech moved to the harder truth. The world already produces enough food, yet hunger persists because supply is only one part of the problem. Access, affordability and power decide who eats well and who goes without. In many parts of Africa, yields are being pushed backwards by climate shocks, degrading soils and water scarcity. But the deeper fracture runs through income, debt and unequal exposure to risk. Countries that rely heavily on food imports, carry large debt burdens or remain politically fragile pay more for grain, inputs and finance. Within countries, the poorest households spend the biggest share of their income on food, whether in Scotland or Somalia. Women produce much of the world’s food, yet when budgets tighten or supplies run short, women and girls are still the most likely to eat least and eat last. McNeill’s argument was clear: hunger is inequality made visible through the food system.

The figures used in the speech gave that argument real weight. McNeill cited estimates showing that 645 million people went hungry last year, while a third of humanity could not afford a healthy diet. In Africa, that rose to roughly two in every three people. The child nutrition picture was even more severe: 35 million children were acutely malnourished, and nearly 10 million were so severely affected that, without treatment, they could die. The minister’s anger centred on the fact that famine is rarely an accident. In Sudan, the speech pointed to besieged towns, attacked markets, blocked aid convoys and the killing of more than 140 volunteers trying to feed their neighbours. Gaza was cited as another place where decisions about access quickly shaped child malnutrition outcomes. The environmental lesson is uncomfortable but necessary: once food systems are already brittle, conflict can turn climate and price shocks into catastrophe far faster.

McNeill also tried to ground the argument at home. Around 60 per cent of the food consumed in the UK is produced domestically, a level described in the speech as a real source of resilience but not a guarantee of safety. Britain still depends on global markets, imported inputs and functioning ecosystems elsewhere. National preparedness, in other words, cannot stop at farm gates or port gates. The domestic response outlined was a Food Preparedness Group working with farmers, businesses and civil society to identify resilience gaps and improve planning for acute shocks. That may sound procedural, but it is close to what a credible food strategy looks like: knowing where supply chains are thin, where storage and logistics can fail, and where nature loss abroad could become price stress at home. Open and predictable trade still matters, but so does reducing the number of single points of failure inside the system.

One of the strongest sections of the speech dealt with timing. According to the Global Report on Food Crises, 33 countries have appeared in every edition of the report for a decade. McNeill used that figure to argue that most food crises are not surprises. The warning systems exist. What repeatedly fails is the route from evidence to finance to political action. That is why the UK said it was pushing for a shared risk picture led by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, backed by pre-arranged finance and quicker co-ordination from governments, development banks, insurers and UN agencies. McNeill said the UK was also using the Global Network against Food Crises to back countries sounding the alarm, including Somalia earlier in the year. The speech pointed to up to £15 million in anticipatory action ahead of El Niño, including livestock vaccination and cash support for farmers before the worst shocks landed. It is a practical approach: prevention is usually cheaper, faster and more humane than waiting for crop failure to become famine.

The speech also made room for a point often lost in high-level food debates: local responders are usually first on the scene and last in line for funding. In Sudan, McNeill highlighted volunteer-led Emergency Response Rooms and community kitchens that were reaching people international agencies could not. The policy conclusion followed naturally. If governments are serious about resilience, more money and more decision-making need to move closer to affected communities. Diplomacy sat alongside that local focus. McNeill said the UK would use its position through the UN Security Council and wider coalitions to press for humanitarian access, civilian protection and accountability where starvation is used against civilians. Nutrition was placed at the centre of that approach, with the Action Review Panel on Child Wasting and the Child Nutrition Fund presented as routes for turning concern into treatment and prevention. The speech noted that the fund had helped mobilise more than $1 billion for countries facing the highest burdens of undernutrition.

Longer term, the speech returned to the building blocks of a steadier food system: social protection, land ownership, co-operatives, healthy soils, reliable water, resilient crops and functioning ecosystems. McNeill said communities in Palestine, Ukraine, Kenya and Sudan had shown how organised producers can pool risk, access markets and keep more value local. That is not a quick fix, but it is one of the sturdier answers to repeated shocks. Science and investment were presented as part of that same repair effort. Through CGIAR and related partners, UK-backed research is helping develop crops that can cope better with drought and heat and livestock protection that reduces disease losses. McNeill pointed to Brazil’s work on bio-inputs and support for family farmers as a sign that countries can cut reliance on fossil-fuel-based fertilisers while keeping producers productive. The Belém Declaration on Fertilisers and the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty were cited as examples of broader co-operation. The sharpest line in the speech was also its simplest: food security is security. The bigger takeaway is that climate adaptation, trade resilience, soil restoration and early finance belong in the same conversation. If governments treat hunger as a political choice rather than an inevitable outcome, the response can move beyond emergency relief towards a food system that is more resilient, more regenerative and far harder to break.