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A power cut, an internet outage, or a cyberattack: as citizens are urged to prepare for emergencies with a home kit, the Dutch government is drafting its own plans to keep food flowing “in case,” and it wants supermarkets to play a central role.
A crisis plan in the making
State Secretary Silvio Erkens says the National Food Security Crisis Plan (Landelijk Crisisplan Voedselzekerheid) is almost ready. “We’re making as much speed on it as possible,” he said. The plan includes supermarkets and distribution centres because they are both essential and vulnerable. This became clear when a cyberattack hit Albert Heijn. Food security was never truly at risk, but the incident exposed weaknesses in a Dutch system that aims for maximum efficiency with minimal stock.
Emergency reserves
Right now, supermarkets and distribution centres do not have to keep emergency stock. The government wants to change this. Erkens says he is talking with supermarkets about building up emergency reserves of key goods together, “so that in disruptive situations you can always fall back on that reserve.”
How to set up these reserves is still an open question. Marc Janssen, director of the food-retail association CBL, says it would be hard to add reserves to current buildings, at least for now, because storage space is limited. Storing more would require rebuilding. He suggests another option: the government could buy or build warehouses and fill them with the right products, with clear agreements on logistics and distribution through shops or community centres. Erkens thinks existing distribution centres could also store emergency stocks, even if this means giving up some efficiency. “But then you’ve got two or three days of goods in there to always absorb a first risk.”
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The lesson of the Albert Heijn hack
Janssen calls the cyberattack a learning experience that highlights a key weakness: relying too much on digital systems. Even if a distribution centre has emergency stock, what happens if the digital systems fail or need to be turned off? “From an incident like this, you can also learn that you need a plan B for more analogue food distribution,” Janssen said, “so that you’re not dependent only on digital systems.”
Any emergency stock would be smaller than the usual range in shops, and the government is now deciding which products are essential. “It’s not a great national disaster if kiwis can’t be delivered; then you’ve still got other kinds of fruit,” Erkens said. “But if really essential product categories fall away, then you do need to build up a stock of those together.”
Is it enough?
Some researchers doubt that the plans go far enough. Earlier this month, the Clingendael Institute and Erasmus University said the Netherlands is not well prepared for a food-security disaster. They suggest supermarkets keep a “dynamic” emergency reserve, a buffer that is sold and replaced regularly so it doesn't spoil. Researcher Pieter Zwaan says the best preparation is at home, not in the shop. He recommends keeping eight days of food at home instead of three, but the government has not officially adopted this advice. He admits this is not possible for everyone because of space or cost, so supermarkets could help by distributing products in a coordinated way during a real crisis.