🚨Out now: Report argues Britain’s food economy needs to properly reward good food and farming.
Today, new analysis from FFCC's @crtaverner shows the real impact of a dysfunctional food system built around cheap food at all costs. Farmers and the public are losing out.
🍔 Push for low-cost calories has cheapened British food over decades
📉 Farming incomes have barely improved in real terms for 50 years
🛒 Tiny number of big businesses now dominate Britain’s food chain
🌾 UK’s long-term food resilience at risk in volatile world facing climate change
💪 Government must fix dysfunctional economy for public benefit
Read the @guardian exclusive and the report in full via our bio link.
📚 New report: Unhealthy food is costing UK over £250 billion
Analysis from Prof @proftimjackson for FFCC reveals the costs of Britain’s unhealthy food system amount to £268 billion every year – almost equivalent to the total annual UK healthcare spend.
It shows the current food system is costing 4 x more in health-related costs than it would cost to fix it – and that the way we eat, grow and produce food is imposing a staggering financial burden on the British economy.
The report draws on, amongst other evidence, the latest findings from #TheFoodConversation, which shows the extent of the public’s appetite for government intervention on food.
It comes ahead of the Citizens Food Summit, which brings together citizens with leaders in food, farming, business, health and politics to call for urgent reform to food in the UK.
Read the @guardian exclusive and Tim's report in our link in bio.
🌊New blog: Sea change: what now for food and land in Wales?
🏴With new leaders in the @seneddwales , our Wales Director Jon Parker explores what the new political landscape means for food, farming and land in Wales.
📈“Over the past decade, food policy in Wales has largely been framed through economic growth, often measured narrowly through sales and turnover at the processing end of the system. That approach has delivered some success. But it has also left important questions underexplored: resilience, equity, environmental limits, public health, and the long‑term public value of the food system.
🍏”As Plaid Cymru begins work on its Programme for Government, there is an opportunity to ask different questions. Not simply how do we grow the sector? But what kind of food system does Wales need – and who benefits from it? ”
💡Read the full blog via our bio link.
🗣️”Resilient self-reliance…should promote more diverse, just, and locally rooted agroecological food systems that reduce dependence on fossil fuels and external inputs, and support smaller-scale producers and local and territorial markets.”
👉A new report from IPES-Food, launched today, looks at the new geopolitics of food – and how the ‘new normal’ of rising food prices, climate shocks, and global instability reveal just how fragile food systems have become.
⚖️The report finds that this geopolitical shift is layering new shocks onto a system already prone to instability and reinforcing existing power asymmetries. Rather than long global supply chains dominated by a handful of powerful companies, fairer and more localised food systems can help build the resilience we need.
🚨This reflects the work the Citizen Advisory Council have been doing through the What Works Here Inquiries. Food systems change is already happening at a regional level across the UK – how can government help unlock this, and ultimately make food fairer, greener and more resilient?
📘 Read the report, The New Geopolitics of Food, from IPES-Food at the bio link.
➡️Head to the bio link to find out more about the Citizen Advisory Council and the What Works Here Inquiries.
🚨New research from @univmiami reveals 98% of environmental claims by the largest food companies in the world are “greenwashing” – including some in the UK & Ireland.
🙄As reported by @wickedleeksmag , the research team “found next to no genuine green claims i.e. those detailing what these companies are actually doing to reduce their environmental impact – in all the reports and across all the websites they looked at.”
💰While the stats are shocking, they are in many ways unsurprising when governments continue to allow shareholder profit to come at the expense of all else.
⚖️Involving citizens in policymaking is one way to address these kinds of issues. They want their leaders to hold Big Food to account – and start balancing the scales towards a fairer, greener and healthier food system.
🔗Read the full article and find out more about how citizens have been working with @defrauk on the new food strategy in the bio link.
📽️ Our Chief Exec @suepr wrapping up a series of blogs that make the case for using the food price crisis as an opportunity to 'bounce forward' to a fairer, greener, more secure future for us all.
This means protecting the most vulnerable while using every lever possible to support citizens, farmers and businesses to build the resilient system we need, not subsidise the one we trying to leave behind.
🔗👉 Head to the bio link to read the three blogs mentioned below
🏃♀️➡️ Running on empty: Sue Pritchard on why it's time we treat food like we do energy
🍎 When prices bite: Mhairi Brown, RNutr on how government can both act on the cost-of-living crisis and build a fairer and more resilient food future
🧑🌾 Crisis as catalyst: @pastureforlife 's Jimmy Woodrow on the need to speed the farming transition
💯 “Unless our natural resources are resilient, our business isn’t going to be resilient”
📈 More headlines this week on food prices. Research from ECIU shows that prices have risen in the past five years at about the same rate as they have over the previous two decades, with climate and energy shocks the driving factors. While shoppers face more expensive weekly shops – and more people are pushed into food insecurity – farmers are also struggling to stay afloat.
🥬 Here, salad farmer Kathryn Wright talks about how their resilience as a business is directly linked to things like soil, water and infrastructure – and how taking a more holistic view of resilience can help mitigate the effects of external shocks.
🐄 In his recent guest blog ‘Crisis as catalyst', @pastureforlife ’s Jimmy Woodrow explores how a transition to low-input, agroecological farming – alongside infrastructure and policy to help this kind of farming flourish – could help build the resilience we need.
🔗 Read Jimmy’s blog and hear more #FarmingVoices via our bio link.
💡 New guest blog: Crisis as catalyst
🌕 With geopolitical turmoil already pushing up input prices and another hot, dry summer ahead, @pastureforlife ’s Jimmy Woodrow sets out what farmers need from government right now.
🎯 “As with the energy transition, this latest crisis makes the strongest case for accelerating the farming transition. The task for the government is protecting producers from the old market structures that are ranged against them – and building the infrastructure that lets farmers and businesses innovate, spread and embed.”
🌱 Read Jimmy’s full blog via our bio link.
💰New blog: When prices bite
⚖️With cost of living set to rocket – and analysis from the Health Foundation showing healthy life expectancy in Britain is in decline – what can politicians do to make food fair and resilient?
🍎Drawing on our work in #TheFoodConversation, FFCC’s Mhairi Brown sets out some bold measures that have strong backing from citizens.
🚀 While the measures that government is already taking on food “show the direction of travel is right, the task now is to accelerate the pace to match the urgency of the moment.”
🔗Read the full blog via our bio link.
🚨”We have to invest in the long term, in generational thinking, and not this boom and bust cycle.”
🌾Livestock farmer and @realfarmed founder Ian Wilkinson on the multiple risks farmers carry right now – and what we need to build real resilience and stability in our food and farming systems.
🧩Rather than sticking plaster solutions, we need a long-term game plan that supports farmers, citizens and businesses to not only withstand shocks – but thrive, flourish and prosper for generations to come.
📝Yesterday, our Chief Exec @suepr set out some policies that government could enact right now that would start this process – calling for the same ambition and courage on food as we’re seeing on energy.
Read Sue’s blog ‘Running on empty’ – and hear from more #FarmingVoices – at the bio link.
📝 New blog: Running on empty
📈 With the UK heading into a second food price spike in four years, shocks are a feature of the system we live in, not a rare event. But rather than ‘bouncing back’ from yet another crisis, how can we ‘bounce forward’ to a more resilient, secure future?
3️⃣ Our Chief Exec @suepr offers Treasury three suggestions which would protect vulnerable citizens, target support to farmers, and invest in designing systems like public procurement that will withstand geopolitical shocks, climate change impacts and a turbulent economic landscape.
💡 This week, we’ll be shining a light on the opportunities these kind of moments present for government and businesses to be ambitious in building a fairer, more resilient future for us all. Watch this space.
👀 Read the full blog via our bio link.
💬“The thing with young people is that they say it how it is. If a kid doesn’t like something or feels a certain way, they will tell you…There’s no beating around the bush…They’ll just tell you what the problem is and how it affects them”
💥 In our latest #FieldGuideForTheFuture, Hasan (@hasan.nassar_deputy_myp ) - a @food.foundation Ambassador and Citizen Advisory Council member - tells us why young people bring the perspectives politicians and decision-makers need to hear.
🌿Growing up in Halifax, Hasan has seen how rising food prices and the loss of local fresh food shops are changing what’s available, and what people can realistically choose.
⚖️ It’s an understanding grounded in lived experience of the pressures and constraints people navigate every day.
🥕Through the Citizen Advisory Council, that insight is directly informing the new Food Strategy, by shaping solutions that reflect how people actually live, eat and make decisions.
👉Read more via the link in bio.
