Droughts and wildfires in the summer were a wake-up call and winter flooding could leave Wales’ food supply vulnerable, an expert has warned.

The country currently imports the vast majority of its fruit and vegetables, with only 6% of those served in its schools grown in Wales.

It is dependent on produce from parts of the world prone to droughts and fires, according to co-founder of an organisation aiming to address this.

Duncan Fisher is behind Our Food Trust, external, which wants to build 100 farms, producing fruit and vegetables in Wales for local markets.

Despite 90% of the country being used for agriculture, external, only about 0.1% is currently being used for horticulture, external.

Growers at Fisher’s Wern Farm, near Newtown, Powys, said this must change if the country is to survive climate change, wars and other global disruptions to the supply chain.

“We are hugely dependent and these vegetables are coming from really vulnerable parts of the world like south Europe and north Africa – the areas most prone to drought, fires, and overheating,” said Fisher.

Food security has become a hot topic, with Defence Secretary Wes Streeting saying in October people should have water, tinned goods, baby food, torches and mobile phone charging packs ready in case of emergency.

Fisher referenced this appeal, adding the UK “has an incredibly centralised food system with 95% of the food we eat bought from nine supermarkets”.

He said: “There’s no storage, it’s a just-in-time system so the food is stored in lorries moving across motorways.

“That is a security hazard because it’s very vulnerable to cyber attacks.

“If the system goes wrong, there’s no resilience in it. The food just runs out straight away.”

Fisher and Sue Holbrook launched Our Food Trust about 10 years ago with the aim of growing more produce locally for local markets.

They found one of the main barriers was stable housing for farmers.

As Fisher explained: “If there’s a high wind during the night, they need to get out there and protect things.

“If a sheep gets in, they have to get the sheep out before the entire thing is destroyed in an hour. So they have to live there.”

But he said planning regulations have made it really difficult to build homes on farmland.

However, by working with Powys council and Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority, they have been able to build three temporary homes for farmers on 36 acres of council-owned land.

They are currently building three more.

One of the growers at Wern Farm is Lydia Dibben, 28, and she agreed access to land is one of the biggest barriers to new farmers.

She said if her home was not provided she would have to get another job to be able to afford rent, and then would end up without enough time to farm.

“I’m only growing on about just over an acre this year, and we’re now doing 50 veg boxes a week,” she said.

“We’ve been doing four farmers’ markets a month up until the beginning of October. We’re also supplying into regional and national wholesale as well.

“I don’t know how many people we’re feeding, but it’s got to be hundreds of people on just a couple of acres.”

She believes there are lots of people who want to do similar work, and they should be given access to land and affordable housing to do so.

Dibben said she believed people in the UK thought it would be able to “avoid many of the real challenges of climate breakdown” and “just be able to grow grapes and peaches” but the reality is very different.

“We’re going to have to really think a lot harder about how we’re producing food, even in this country,” she said.

This includes looking at which vegetables work best in hotter climates.

Dibben described the past summer as the hardest she had experienced in five years of growing.

“The hours I was keeping were just insane,” she said.

“I was getting out to the field at 05:00, and then working until it got just too hot to be outside, which was like 11:00 some days, maybe even earlier.”

She said working in polytunnels was impossible by 09:00 due to the heat.

When it became too hot to work, she had to go indoors and “just survive until it was cool enough to go back outside at probably 17:00”.

She then worked until midnight to try and get everything watered.

Dibben said she did not usually have to worry too much about not having enough water, but this year was completely different.

“Even the things that you felt like you were giving as much water as you could were still not growing as much as they should be,” she added.

“Everything was slower and stunted.

“We’ve not had the water bill yet for this summer, but I dread to think.

“We’ve just not had the crops to make it worth it.”

She does not believe it will necessarily be as bad every year, but Dibben accepts there will be more hot summers and unpredictable weather such as flooding.

Dibben thinks there will always be a need for bigger scale farms producing wheat, barley, beef or sheep.

“But I think if there was a farm like ours every 10 miles throughout Wales, that would be a pretty great future in my eyes,” she added.

The Welsh government said “significant progress” had been made on its plans to create a national food strategy to “target a more resilient, integrated and sustainable food system”.

“There will also be a focus on how to grow more fruit and vegetables in Wales, and we have already begun mapping the current position of the sector with key stakeholders,” said a spokesperson.

The UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We recognise the hurdles that our vital fruit and vegetable growers face, which is why we are slashing planning red tape and investing £200m to help farmers trial crop boosting technology.

“The prime minister has made clear that food security is national security, and we’re working across the farming sector to make supply chains more resilient.”