Experts are warning that the UK is unprepared for crises. A refrigerator cyber-attack scare in France is the latest reminder of the risks

What’s worrying French supermarket bosses should be prompting British ministers to action. On Sunday, hackers forced up the temperatures of refrigerators in hundreds of food stores across France to as high as 50C, resulting in waste and fires. Beyond the immediate destruction and inconvenience, it raised the prospect of other malicious actors finding new ways to play havoc with the food chain.

Only weeks before, 150 experts together warned the British government that it does not have a plan to feed people in a crisis ­– and that the west is entering an era in which not only disruption but the weaponisation of food is a real possibility. “The public has been led to assume that food will simply be there,” they wrote. “It may not be.”

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Cultivating the nutritious bugs means families can raise livestock and enrich their own food, while lowering pressures on the land

A few minutes’ walk from his home in the Kyaka II refugee settlement, Kanane Bikanyale feeds black soldier fly larvae to chickens in a coop above a fishpond. The larvae disappear in a scrum of chickens. Nearby, more larvae grow in modified jerrycans, while adult flies are kept in netted boxes.

Bikanyale kept chickens before he fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But the cost of conventional feed and shortages of ingredients made them increasingly difficult to raise – a widespread pressure for millions of smallholder farmers whose margins are tight.

Kanane Bikanyale tends to his black soldier fly larvae in a rearing unit in the Kyaka II refugee camp in Uganda

The UK state is dumping its responsibilities on our doorsteps, while green-lighting policies that lead us closer to crisis

Would you mind fixing the NHS? And while you’re at it, could you please build an anti-missile system in your garden? Then regulate the banks, replace the water mains, tax the very rich and use the proceeds to rebuild our schools. Well, come on people: what are you waiting for?

I exaggerate, but this isn’t very far from the approach taken by the government’s Prepare campaign. Crucial functions, way beyond the scope of individual action, are dumped on our doorsteps while those in power fail to act. As a result, our national resilience is arguably lower than at any time since the second world war. At the Labour conference last week, Andy Burnham promised “a Britain where people feel the country has got their back again”. To make good on that pledge, he will have to change almost everything.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist