Was the UK really reliant on 70% food imports before the Second World War?

by alltorndown

I’ve found this statistic in a couple of unsourced popular history sites, and it seems huge to me, empire and huge merchant navy non-withstanding?

https://www.cooksinfo.com/british-wartime-food/

https://www.history.co.uk/article/how-brits-utilised-allotments-during-two-world-wars-the-era-of-%25E2%2580%2598growing-your-own%25E2%2580%2599

Bigglesworth_

It's certainly in that ballpark; "Before the war, the United Kingdom was dependent on imports for more than half of its food supplies: one-half of the meat, nearly all the fats, four-fifths of the sugar and nine-tenths of the cereals and flour" (The Urban Working-Class Household Diet 1940 to 1949, Ministry of Food); "About seven-eighths of Britain's wheat and flour and over two-thirds of her total calories came from across the seas" (The Economics of the Wartime Shortage: A History of British Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in World Wars I and II, Mancur Olson Jr.); "By 1938 less than 4 per cent of the people made their living directly from the land, agriculture represented only 3.2 per cent of the national income, and industrial Britain imported two-thirds of its foodstuffs from abroad" (Food for War: Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain before the Second World War, Alan F. Wilt). Wilt notes that Keith Murray gives a figure of 70% in Agriculture, "slightly higher than that of other writers, who estimate the percentage to be 65-67%".

The roots of this stretch back to the 19th century, something that /u/agentdcf specialises in; see e.g. their answers for Why did Britain import over half of its food in the early 20th century? How much food did other nations import at that time? and How long has Britain been dependent on food supplies from elsewhere?