Two Machynlleth residents took the opportunity of residents “panic-buying” food after chillers temporarily stopped working in the town’s Co-op store to “highlight their concerns about our fragile food system”.

Fridges at the store were not working – a situation that has now been fixed – and Freya Pryce and Sadie Maund put up bilingual posters on the store’s empty shelves and fridges saying: “Worried about food security? Grow your own. Support local farmers”.

The pair said they had “decided to highlight their concerns about our fragile food system” after calling the situation “chaos”.

Sadie, a local grower, said: “Here in Machynlleth we have plenty of fertile land and rainfall, yet most of our food is imported and farmers really struggle to make a living.

“Communities used to be far more self-sufficient in this area. We used to grow a huge variety of food and it had a higher nutritional value than today’s imports.

“Now, government subsidies have pushed us towards fragile monoculture that damages our soils and the environment.

“It doesn’t provide what the community needs and so we rely on importing food from all over the world, places that are under immediate threat from climate change.

“A drought in Morocco can cause a food shortage in mid Wales.

“It’s such a precarious situation.”

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