Why fixing our food system is critical for us and for wildlife.
Our food systems are reliant on thriving nature and a stable climate. This webinar looked at how nature’s decline and our food systems are linked, and what we can do to create a more resilient food system in the UK.
Tim Lang is Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University’s Centre for Food Policy. Hill farming in Lancashire in the 1970s formed his interest in the relationship between food, health, environment and culture, which he’s worked on ever since. He’s currently working on how to improve civil food resilience and defence.
Vicki Hird is a campaigner and strategist who has been working on environment, food and farming issues for more than 30 years. As well as her role at Sustain, she is working on agricultural issues with The Wildlife Trusts movement. Her recent book, Rebugging the Planet, pays homage to insects and other invertebrates, examining why they are so essential to our ecosystems.
Many as we can uh at the end of both presentations this afternoon’s event we’re going to hear from two wonderful speakers uh who I will introduce in just a moment following that our chief exac Estelle Bailey is going to come on and announce the winners of this year’s bout
Photography competition uh which was a fantastic competition and we’ll get to look at some beautiful pictures at the end of the session but first we are absolutely delighted to welcome two fantastic speakers this afternoon first up you’re going to hear from Professor Tim Lang now he was Professor for food policy at City
University and for decades has been interested in the relationships between food Health environment culture he’s currently working on improving Food Systems and food resilience uh and defense kind of a topical um uh Topic at the moment uh Vicky herd who you’ll hear from after Tim is a
Campaigner and a strategist till the end of this past week she was at sustain um and is also now working for the central Wildlife trusts uh advising and leading on agricultural issues she also has a book rebug in the planet which examines why insects are so essential to our
Ecosystems we know how important food is it’s not something you can give up it’s absolutely critical a lot of us really enjoy it and so learning more about what we eat how we get it where it comes from how it’s produced and how the whole system links together uh or doesn’t
Sometimes is kind of what we wanted to get to and really how it’s so important in terms of nature climate and the environment so without further Ado I’m going to hand over to Prof Professor Tim Lang uh the next 20 minutes are all yours Tim very good thanks very much Karen and
Thanks to bout for inviting me uh I was brought up mostly in India as a child until I was nearly eight but then we went and lived in Bim from my parents did so I I know pretty well uh and yesterday I live in inner London very
Inner London yesterday I was two days ago I was putting out some washing as one does um uh uh and Lear whole those was a red kite circling above my house and I thought goodness me um I’ve never seen one of those in central London um
But there we go so look I you’ve got my slides I’ve done quite a lot of slides they’re pretty intense that so that you can look at them later I think it’s very very important that we understand the evidence of some of these issues that we
Argue and discuss um Vicki and I uh know each other very well for decades and it’s actually a great pleasure for me to do this with Vicki on the beginnings of her her her new role uh uh because I used to chair s and I help found it and and both its
Predecessors um 38 years ago uh 35 years ago so it’s very nice to do this with Vicki my message can I have the next slide please my I always put in the first slide what I’m going to say and then you can fall asleep I mean essentially if we want to understand the
British food system we use this language of a system because it’s no longer any point talking about agriculture or horiculture or uh Hospitality you’ve got to put the whole of the food system from Supply inputs right through to how we consume and what we do with our waste if
We’re to understand food’s impact on nature uh and eating is if I say one sentence and then you can go to sleep it’s a how we eat what we eat and how what we uh uh eat is produced processed and delivered to us is probably the biggest and certainly among the biggest
Impacts on the planet it’s the biggest C user of water it’s the biggest land User it’s the biggest employer uh it’s the biggest cause of premature death it’s the biggest driver of ill health in other words unless we tackle the food system the relationship between public health and ecosystems Health I.E us and
The planet is frankly doomed uh and it’s not good at the moment people like me are actually very sober I spent my life working this I was a farmer an organic farmer uh uh 50 years ago for best part of a decade but then in the last 40
Years have been mostly an academic but sometimes running think tanks and occasionally campaigns uh so I don’t know if you’ve been reading this but essentially uh in Britain we have particular idiosyncrasies we have this Imperial Legacy from 1846 thinking everyone else would feed us it was called an Empire we
Haven’t got that anymore we’ve left the European Union what are we doing about that we don’t produce all of our own food only 54% actually uh the ownership and the power of the food industry is highly concentrated the good news for people like Vicki and I talk to eight
Retailers and you’re talking to the food system and The Gatekeepers of it but what do we do about that for for for protecting nature these retailers say oh we can’t do anything it’s all about the consumer and they keep batting it backwards and forwards so actually Wildlife trusts have to get real about
That power and influence consumption is distorted we’re overc consuming Mal consuming and great pockets of Britain big slabs of Britain are underc consuming uh we’ve seen in the cost of living crisis how that’s impacting upon us and the fourth bullet point it’s a huge impact it’s the biggest driver of
Climate change of of Western consumers biodiversity loss the biggest user of water land use uh and the the photograph of the beautiful Bucky sure uh bout sort of terrain that you claim that to me is a nightmare uh it’s the legacy of animal culture not horiculture animal culture uh helping Drive ecosystems destruction
Actually I’ll put it pretty starkly uh and yet it we need to turn it around that’s not to say the animals haven’t got their place they’ve become too big and how we using them and growing them processing them and so on and managing them is a critical issue and it’s on
Your doorstep it’s down your mouth it’s a socially divided Factor uh diet is one of the biggest factors in the enormous Gap now between rich and poor dying uh uh in the Victorian yearsas even the rich died of diseases in in uh the uh the current age it’s 12 years life
Expectancy between save the top 5% and bottom 5% and top 10% bottom 10% literally I mean I wrote a book uh called feeding Britain it came out uh first week of lockdown so three years ago and literally I pointed out that in the richest part of London uh to an area
Of London three miles away life expectancy Gap was 12 years I mean this is literally around us it’s how and what we do uh the cultural mismatch uh is enormous you know we we can eat the world you know say what do I want to eat
Tonight well I’ll eat taii or I’ll eat Indian or I’ll go for an Italian you know we we’re doing this in a way with I mean it’s fantastic compared to when I came back to live in England uh when I was eight uh you know British food was
Brown uh now it’s wonderfully diverse but it’s not the whole picture uh and policy makers Vicki and I would agree our lives have spent in policy uh brexit hasn’t helped us but there was a big crisis before that and we’re not making use of where we are now at all uh but
There are good things going on and people like you the wildlife trusts are really important I’ll say my big personal message always which is amidst anything that you do for landscapers wild TRS please get some horiculture in there sustainable Horticulture is the Paramount priority of food and reconnecting uh the Brits to their
Landscape uh if we continue to eat in the way that we do uh we’re basically sealing our undoing and if you just say well don’t worry we’ll look after our bit of the landscape and we’ll import more food well you’re then being a parasite basically and I’m not saying
Grow pineapples or bananas in barkshire on the contrary I’m saying we have to think very carefully about the transition that is being forced on us let me be very clear it’s being forced on us uh but we need to actually get a grip of it uh uh and sort it out uh so
This is very tricky and uh it requires big alliances it requires us to talk with corporates uh uh but not necessarily accept everything that everyone says and it’s a very delicate problem okay next slide I can go faster now this is a very complicated slide it’s actually two slides if you didn’t
Think or know or know the data on how important food is on the left food accounts for at least a quarter of greenhouse gas uh Emissions on the right of this slide you can look at all of these later different foods have different impacts basically the more you go up this slide
The the right hand side um uh you get towards Dairy and meats the impact goes up basically and I spent four years of my life on a huge and one of the most highly cited scientific papers of the last decade a report called the eat Lan commission I spent four years as policy
Head of that trying to work out what are we going to do about this impact and it requires Us in the rich West to eat very differently in order to allow the rest of the world particularly the poor world to eat better uh and that’s a very delicate restructuring of land use next
Slide please um here very specifically is Britain’s greenhouse gases uh you can see uh that you know not everything is to do with food about greenhouse gases uh uh but agriculture is up there at the top what we do with our land and how we use it is extremely important it matters
If we uh import foods it matters what our food and drink uh manufacturing is but agriculture is the really big one but if you just said well it’s only about agriculture people like me say no it isn’t because if you’re going to sort out what you want out of Agriculture
You’ve got to get a grip of food manufacturing you’ve got to get a grip of packaging because the packaging drives processing and drives how things are given to Consumers and then ends up as as rubbish and waste it’s not necessarily a big greenhouse gas impact
But it has a very big driving effect on how the food system works next slide please you can look at all of these later this is three slides this is just me wanting to rub it very clearly into my brain let alone your brain how important food is um and over time there
Are Trends which are very interesting on the left hand side Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions are actually coming down very gently but the bad news about that is that some of that is due to food industry getting a bit more wise to this and starting to address some of it but
Some of it’s just to do with what we’re allowing those emissions to occur far off and Far Away um and there are different on on the bottom the one that I’ve rather crudely ringed from the agriculture Horticulture and development board a couple of years ago I do want to
Remind you that you know things like transport are very very important what we all do it’s complex it’s complex so there’s a Welter of data that people like Vicki and and I help try to negotiate through make sense of next slide please um the impacts are enormous as uh
Uh Karen said in her introduction to me I’m currently working on a very very serious piece of research a report that I’m doing for a a body in and around government uh looking at what happens how how resilient is Britain and I’m particularly interested in the public uh
How resilient is the public are they prepared for shocks because they’re coming they’re on us slowly already and others will come and we’ve had specific shocks for a long time actually which have been early warning there’ve been sort of canary uh tweets if you like uh
I’ve listed some down on the left and then we’ve got these long running ones that we’ve normalized we take them for granted oh climate change oh yeah that’s normal you know well actually it’s not normal this is being heavily driven well it’s heavily driven by us people but
Heavily driven by the food system within our impacts next slide please um I’m a policy man uh I set up uh still the world’s only specialist um Research Center looking at Food policy it’s now over 30 years old at City University you couldn’t be far far further from Agriculture and the
Conventional sense of the land but it’s really good because it’s where the power is uh and it’s where capital is it’s where the big companies tend to be based and so on so it’s actually given us a really good opportunity to be if you like an observatory of how the food
System works and why we’re there partly is because we’re interested in policy what are the policy makers doing are they taking note of all these data uh uh and the and the warnings of its own advice system I mean the committee on climate change says time and time again
We have to change what we need as well as how we’re producing our food and it sinks government does nothing the food industry so says yeah of course we think it’s important and what do we get very little change uh and this here is the
Sort of thing I spent my working life on just looking how the state of British food policy is fragmented is weak leaving the European Union has disrupted it and we still haven’t replaced it we haven’t got a food act replacing the common agricultural policy we’ve got an agriculture act but it didn’t hardly
Mentioned food and yet how the food system works shapes what agriculture does so there are lots of things going on and not going on that require us and you as Wildlife trust to be very involved in the policy World which is why it’s wonderful um uh the R soci Wild drife trust has
Employed Vicki because you’ve got a great person there to help you do it next slide please um well I’ve said this already uh there’s if you’re interested policy onks like me know this UK food security report when getting the agriculture bill for England through the House of Commons
Some of us persuaded the House of Lords to demand that there was an annual review of food Security in Britain we didn’t get that but we got a three-yearly review the first one of that came out very conveniently I.E I think deliberately at a time when it get
No publicity the the last working day Before Christmas two years ago uh it’s actually a very interesting report but it Ducks lots of the questions that we now need to address how much food do we want to grow where how and and the the difficulties are piling up some of them
Are quite nicely summarized in that report by the way and I’ve put the link there um but basically Britain is an importing it’s a parasite where living on our Imperial past we’re living under the European past we’re not taking our own land use to feed ourselves seriously and Farmers aren’t getting the guidance
Uh and we’ve got this whole movement of rewilding which somehow severing severing ecosystems damage onto how we eat next slide please you can look at all of these slides later there’s a lot of detail in here are the figures on sufficiency longterm I’m interested in long-term trends 1960 on the left you
Know the peak point was in the early 1980s Britain was producing about 80% of its own food and then gently it’s declined it’s it’s gone stable but the government latest figures are basically we’re producing about 54% of our food and where we get it from is overwhelming it’s still from the European Union
There’s a fantasy that we’ve left Europe Europe’s feeding us and we’ve made the the gaps the difficulties of getting food in and out exports and imports more difficult and that’s a real problem actually a very very serious problem for the farming industry indeed for the food processing processing industry next
Slide um but it’s not just about uh that farming stuff it’s about how we eat and these are just some slides to make that point there is a great concern in my world my Center the center I I I don’t any run run anymore because I’m technically a retired uh uh uh we’re
Very conern we’re based in the public health department we’re concerned about the impacts on public health people like me are saying well the public health human health impacts of the food system are linked to how we’re doing not dissimilar damage to E ecosystems and there’s a very interesting argument
People like you are now involved in which is are we not just eating um too much processed foods when we don’t know what are in them but we’re eating particular sorts of processed foods what we call uh ultr processed foods meaning foods which are highly manufactured full
Of fats salts and sugar and are held together by multii and colorant to make us make it look like food and those are changing the nature of food well that’s my sort of Interest possibly not yours except as consumers but I put this in next next slide
Please um we’ve got cost of living problems these are all pressures you’re thinking well why is he talking about this we’re interested in Wildlife but this is the world in which if one is interested and I say I am interested in wildlife and ecosystems and food one has
To know that the arguments for wildlife and food are jostling for attention with policy makers with other issues cost of living is really number one of uh for outsid track policy makers government has Ted to duck it actually it might have taken energy seriously but it hasn’t done much about food you might
Have noticed but the volatility of prices is a very critical issue and one of the things that’s happened since the oil price crisis of 20078 uh when oil went to over $100 a barrel was that food prices have been volatile ever since what’s oil got to do
With food fertilizers is oil and gas which have enabled farming to become so-called more efficient and that’s our problem next slide please uh basically Britain’s land use is I think distorted it’s away with the feries if I’m honest the total amount of land we’ve got is 18 million hectars
About six of those a third are croppable in the formal term horiculture is not even in the millions it’s not even in the uh quarter of a Millions it’s only about 165,000 hectares and yet that is where the foundation of health comes from which is fruit vegetables and of
Course grains and cereals a huge proportion of the grains and cereals we grow in Britain are fed to animals uh where distorting by our love affair with meat uh uh and I speakers an next be sheep farmer I should have said uh uh to uh shape shape ecosystems as
Well as public health next next slide pleas uh if you think these things don’t matter I always just say think water the Brits say well we’re a wet country we’ve not got a problem that is the map of the environment agencies of areas which are water stressed we’re not thinking
Through water use and food is embedded water when you have I have one cup of coffee a day my cup of coffeee is about 140 liters of embedded water uh we can think totally different about what the food is and its impact on the environment by looking at embedded
Carbon embedded water embedded nitrogen in of phosphates and indeed embedded human labor and the one that I think is coming out very fast on Britain is embedded water next slide please uh I was born in Lincoln so I’m interested in that bit around the wash uh it’s going to go underwater basically
Uh it’s stopped from being underwater and being Marshland some of us myself included really like it when it’s Marshland uh but it’s where most of our halic culture comes from we’re having to Think Through very big land use issues very fast and government’s ducking it if I’m honest not making the
Connection next slide please next slide how am I doing okay what can we do very quickly before I wrap up next slide please uh basically government I’m saying is being silent next slide you can look at all of these uh you can I think there are Pathways people like me
Develop these sort of things there are ways we can develop a transition in food over 30 years to lower the impact next slide please you can look at all of these things there is wonderful experimentation Vicki uh working for sustain the really helpful organization of which I’m very proud starting bodies
And helping nurture and publicize bodies small Horticultural organization experimentation of new relationships between towns and the countryside in my report I’m working on at the moment very interesting International experience in France huge developments of a movement called town and Countryside we should be learning from these and developing these
Here now you in Wildlife CR said who we don’t want that we don’t want horiculture we want more Wildlife there is no contradiction between horiculture and Wildlife it depends how we do it next slide please uh and I put this up you know I in my book feeding Britain I was very
Critical of NEP there’s really wonder wonderful uh transition that the Burl family did and elizabella K Mrs barl uh her wonderful book I was critical of it because I said well you’ve gone from producing food to producing only meat uh I take eat all my words last year I hope
From CRI and people like me they started a market gardening uh program fantastic uh go and have a look at it uh next slide please and then I’ll finish next slide please let’s get to the end let’s get to the end go go go go go to the end
Okay stop go back to that one whoa whoa whoa go back go back go back back back back back yeah back one more I think we’re all about investing in the good stuff this is my hand over to Vicki uh that top right photo I love
This is about getting food growing to an orchard uh reconnecting with whatever we want to grow for food this is sheep uh my own family contributed uh to uh uh the beginnings of Agro forestry in one part of the UK uh and we’ve got to develop things like this but the reality
Is much more at the bottom migrant labor picking field crops in in very difficult circumstances for low wages because the Brits don’t want to work on it we’ve got some very serious issues uh away from Wildlife that we’ve got to address but to summarize in the last sentence Karen
Basically the message is potentially very good but at the moment we’re not in a good place uh and Wildlife trust one of the many reasons I’ve done this and I’m I’ve known Craig Bennett the uh the the the chief exec of the the the combined wild Tri St for years and I
Think you’re in a very important role now and place to connect and to be a force to connect and get governments to start reshaping Food Systems uh to enable us to have both human health and ecosystems health thanks that’s wonderful thank you very much Tim a few questions have already started
Coming in uh so a reminder that if you do have some as Vicki speaks as well to put them into the Q&A box at the bottom and we will try to address as many as we can at the end but without further Ado I’m going to hand over to Vicki herd to
Give us uh her take on this topic and then we’ll do some questions at the end thank you thank you very much Karen and to B out for inviting me and Tim uh we it’s it’s actually lovely as Tim said to do a talk with him and I’m doing this
Talk as sustained because I don’t want to speak out of turn as um the uh strategic leader on agriculture at the wildlife trusts the roal society Wildlife trusts so everything I say is sort of with sustain but it’s also going to be uh make Tim very happy to know
That I will be working a lot of this at Wildlife trusts including hor culture which I’m very pleased about because it is as he said extremely important um so it’s with that switch that I’m speaking but still with very much a think about sustain as sort of where I’m coming from
Um and on this slide you can see it’s a local farmers market that I’ve got where I live in in London which is organic and therefore it’s allowing a huge amount of uh organic farming and Farmers to survive and have a good living um in an environment where it’s very difficult
For organic farmers to survive um which I’ll go on to anyway but um that’s a picture of a um uh Garden tiger moth I found in Scotland anyway I’ve got a few pictures of invertebrates because invert it’s my much bigger love anyway next slide please I’ll probably um just I’ll
Talk quickly about sustain and what I thought I’d do because I knew Tim would be brilliant and he’d go over things and there’s a lot to think about so I’ll probably go over quite a bit of what he said but drill into it a bit more detail
And think about the um trade offs and issues um so just to finish suain is about 110 organization uh ranging from the rspb and the wildlife trust to Royal Society of Public Health to all the organic bodies uh it’s a very large and and our welfare bodies all interested in
Total or in part of a a a food system that really works for everybody where everybody gets a fair deal and nature and climate is tackled um and also work sort of international level looking at International Trade next slide please so key messages from Tim and from
Our work and from our research is is that we do have a broken food system it’s not feeding us well um we’ve got the um malnutrition from excess as Tim talked about the Ultra pressive Food and malnutrition from um people not being able to eat enough it’s not working for
Farmers and I will touch on that so it’s not working for consumers in terms of having a a good con cultural um offer and ability to to cook good fresh food it’s not working for society in terms of its impact on um are the very environment the very ecosystems on which
We will depend in now and in the future to feed us so it’s the future Generations are not being well looked after here either um big threats some are already becoming locked in climate change already happening Tim talked about our Imports of fruit and veg fruit
Imports about 80% of the fruit we eat is imported and the third of it coming from climate vulnerable water stressed countries we will not be able to rely on those Imports so that means we’ll have to be producing more here which has big implications for nature talk about that
In a bit and Tim touched on that and we’ve got obviously nature loss our recent um state of nature report that came from the big conservation organizations made that very clear we have not sorted out in any way the problems that we identified in the first
State of nature report many years ago um still getting declines particularly invertebrates really uh appalling data and that’s partly to do with some of the um locked in problems like neonicotinoid pesticides still in the soil and the water system still harming um the invertebrates that we rely on for
Pollination from Pest Control Etc so business as usual is not an option I think Tim made that very clear and it’s a local and a regional and a national and a global problem all of them have to be in um addressed and it’s about the system as Tim talked about we can’t just
Sort out farming we have to sort out the supply chain we have to sort out consumption we have to sort out trade um and just to finish off I often Phil I have to say this we don’t need more food one of the big pushes particularly around the Ukraine invasion is that we
Need more food to feed us we need UK can Fe Feed the World we’re very efficient food producers we don’t need more food we have enough to feed 11 billion now we just don’t use it well and we don’t allow many countries and many people to actually afford good food there’s loads
Within that but we don’t need to push the land nature further than it already has been pushing in fact we needed to do less but we can do it better next slide please um I thought I’d just explore what we mean by eating there obviously a huge emotional response when you talk to
People like if if you’re working within the trust or within a nature area and you talk to people about food people immediately have an emotional response even if they rationalize it quickly afterwards their emotional response is dominant they think of what they eat what their children eat what they
Culture eat from culture from their grandparents um and it makes it quite difficult to have a rational discussion unless you recognize that and work on that it’s a huge emotional and I say that coming from 25 years of trying to talk to people about meat and uh you
Know just saw the other week when um it meat tax idea was used by the conservative government during its con uh its party that they they used it as as a woke divisional issue and it was really unhelpful and wrong for a start as well but people will immediately
Because of that emotional response um oppose restrictions oppose any control um The Nanny State and things like that it’s understandable reaction but we need to move on what we need what we eat as a population really matters what we actually encourag to eat really matters and that’s extremely important it needs
A rational approach and the evidence as I said is overwhelming as as Tim slide made absolutely clear it’s huge everything we eat comes from the land almost everything comes from the land therefore it affects nature um and it’s not just me just to be clear it’s about
Dairy um but it’s also about junk foods and I think this is beginning to be recognized I’m certainly going to talk about it at the world love trust and globally there’s some really good data showing that the push for Junk foods and as I think the figures now for the UK
54% of our food is from ultr processed foods high sugary fatty oily foods which are not good for us but a hugely harmful for um the environment because they rely on cheap ingredients really cheap ingredients grains oils um fats really cheap ingredients and cheap meat to make hugely harmful products and that means
Monocultures it means removal of hedge RS it means huge monocultures that are um that don’t provide any food for our um birds for our insects anyway you know it’s not just meat it’s junk food it’s monocultures these kind of things and we can do something about that um but it
All affects nature next slide please eating is all about this post Farmgate so the what happens to the food once it’s left the Farmgate supply chain I’ve worked about on this a lot um and I think it’s so important that people recognize this because as Tim said it’s
Really useful that we only have to talk to a few handful of retailers to to get something done doesn’t get done we need regulation they hold TW 92.5% of what we buy is just eight retailers but they don’t want to change their business model is based on getting
Tiny tiny amount of profit from a large amount of produce and they get a lot more profit from the junk and from the alcohol and from the highly processed foods and luxury goods which is why organic is getting a problem because there high price organic they’re making
More than they are from non-organic uh it’s just so mixed up we need to build up the Alternatives um so that’s that’s the retailers and what we choose um Post Farm great makes a big difference to what happens to the um food and how much energy is involved and that affects
Nature because climate change affects nature as well um so fresh versus processed as I’ve talked about and what I’ve worked on a lot and I I released a report last December um called unpicking food prices about what we pay to the farmer so whether the farmer and the
Grower can actually shift to more agroecological regenerative whatever you want to say more diverse farming system very difficult when they’re squeezed so much I’ll just talk about that tiny bit in a minute but also what we waste at least 30% of the food is waste along the
Whole chain a lot is wasted at the domestic level what we waste in our houses is quite extraordinary but I think that’s a lot to do what we encourage to buy next slide please so the nature of loss is land use change obviously and this is the you know obviously intensive farming
Monocultures but it relates to what you eat and that so that that is this is a um sandwich factory um and everything obviously we eat is processed in some ways unless it’s we’re getting the the direct fresh produce which is really important because if we’re buying more
Fresh produce the farmer gets more of the food bound we’re getting more of the product um to and the nutrients within that product for instance beef really D nutrient-dense product lamb really nutrient dense product so maybe we don’t need much of it but if we get it from
The farmer or through a better food Trader we’re going to get the nutrients and the farmer will get a decent return for what is a very risky um system next slide please so we did a survey of farmers a few years ago at sustain to to talk to
Them about the supply chain what what they needed different because we we talking to them anecdotally it’s clear there’s a problem they’re not getting enough and 56% of farmers wanted a different Market beyond the supermarkets they then the further 20% would consider it but obviously most of them are
Selling either to manufacturers and the food service sector and the the retailers who don’t think about nature or climate they might pay lit service to it and they might be demanding changes from the Farmers on the far the farm gate in the farm but not paying enough
For those changes um and the farmers uh wanted to see more food hubs more opportunities to sell local and Regional um box schemes which you might know about farmers markets selling um more directly from the farmers so there’s a whole organization now called the better food Traders Network which is growing
Every month practically and they represent those who are are um selling uh produce more directly so more of the money goes to Farmer and with values like work treatment worker wages and environment um and nature and climate so we did these two reports beyond the
Farmgate and led us to look at the food prices in more detail next slide please this is just one of the illustrations it’s quite a detailed report we got a professor of accountancy called Lisa Jack who actually got via Tim’s outfit the city center for food policy at City
University she’ done a piece of work for them um which was really interesting because it showed how the whole system is on a knif edge retailers are on knif edge cuz they’re so competitive it’s getting worse and the result is this you can see where all the costs are in a
Sliced um wrapped loaf on a supermarket shelf all those costs you know to the to the baker retailer Miller and the farmer has costs obviously a lot of costs and this is where the profits go she did a look at a load of data from industry and
Government this isn’t a case study or a snapshot the farmer gets 0.9 P um of a slice of Loaf and you can imagine if you double that wouldn’t add much to the price of a loaf but it would make a huge difference to the farmer there’s loads
Of um other data in the report and other we did carrots apples burgers and cheese as well but it was really really dramatic data really um still I’m still getting quoted we’re in the guardian this week as a result of this work showing just how poorly the system works
To ensure farmers can Farm sustainably next slide please and we need to rethink Food Systems and that’s complex and so so farmers have to build in skills build in training and demonstration and knowledge into what is an agroecological system and agroecology means not just what happens on the farm but what happens
Beyond the farm gate as I was discussing earlier that is critical um and agroecology is about making your system more complex on the Farm building natural systems to build soil fertility really nurturing the um pollinators and the pest Predators like the Slugs the um the Paras toids which um can really
Reduce your need for insecticides I know a lot of farmers who have totally eliminated insecticides by building their capacity to have pest Predators within the system those Predators need shelter they need food sources they need ways to travel through the farm on in hedge RS Woodlands messy bits field
Headlands and all sorts of these things which is messy and it’s totally different from the monoculture neat farming systems that we’ve had um built up over the last um 50 years is um in response to the great demand for more food but now we know what we need we
Don’t need more food we waste a huge amount of it because we’re Mark it’s marketed so well um anyway the complexity is good but it’s harder for Farmers um but the more we as consumers and we as carers about nature can talk about this and be ambassadors for
Agroecology and for Farmers doing the right thing and supporting Farmers doing the right thing the better because we’ll shift the balance in favor of good farm system um next slide please so a transition to agroecological farming um the data and there’s some really good data from a research institute could reduce greenhouse gas
Emissions by 38% and as Tim showed it’s a huge part of the greenhouse gas um emissions is from the food system offset a further 60% of um greenhouse gas emissions through the food system um by um storing and uh capturing and storing carbon massive production in fertilizing
Pesticides um which have have a huge impact on the soil biology obviously on the environment we all know about neonicotinoid insect um damage but there’s much more that’s happening um I’ll go quicker actually 70% of land being released for um nature restoration um phase out of imported food from
Deforested Land absolutely critical and move to a more mixed forming approach building livestock inter systems um in ways that really work to build aail fertility next slide please so just to quickly go through the committee on climate Sange do suggest a 35% reduction of meat and dairy we
Probably need to go further than that but that’s the official data that this government hasn’t uh done anything to really deliver that we absolutely need governments to help us to do that um and but ruminants play a vital role in nutrient recycling on farms grazing animals are needed to manage
Semi-natural systems part of a mixed and healthy diet and pigs and poultry can be that as part of pastured poultry part of waste um cycling systems Pig should be only eating waste food not a huge amount of grains and soy from the Amazon Etc next slide
Please um so we need political action we need Farm support based on public goods nature restoration engagement with the public agroecology um so we need to build in new crops breeds rotations and that’s what farm support and farm advice from the government you know all nations
Can help deliver if they get it right and we need to be building through infrastructure um investment new processing and trading and new roots to market for making it more regional and local this isn’t about making expensive farmers markets and expensive box schemes this is about available to all
Bridging that gap between what people need on any income they’re at and what the farmers need bridging that Gap by building alternative Roots Market Fair Trading we need to tackle waste get rid of that 30% of waste there shouldn’t be any food waste full stop going into um
Landfill and bio energy 120,000 hectares of the UK is given out to produce energy crops that is not a good use of land to tackle climate wind farms solar Farms use tiny amount of land there’s wind Sol Farms use less land than golf courses let’s get our priorities right and we
Need to promote nature friendly diets nature friendly diets is what it’s about um and personally you can act a citizen um voting um talking to people about it being an ambassador for Good Farming systems and eat with nature in mind direct accredited less processed less
And better meat if you can or no meat if you want to support the farmers and spread the word next slide please that’s it oh my God I managed to do it in the time and thank you and happy eating with and for nature and that’s just a slide a
Picture of my book which came out a bit ago which covers a lot this covers the Politics as well as how wonderful invertebrates are and I have have a particular passion for inverts which I hope I’ll bring to the wildlife trust thank you fantastic thank you Vicky I’m going
To ask both Vicky and Tim to uh to turn their cameras back on and join us if they can and I’m going to ask our events team to uh stop sharing just for a moment so we can um see the speakers wonderful we do have some time
For some questions which is great so uh and we had a lot gosh a lot coming in I could see Tim was busy beavering away in the background answering as many as he possibly could while while Vicki was speaking because there’s no way we would
Have gotten to all of them in the time we have uh we had a question a range from politics to technology to agriculture to all sorts of things have come in so I’m going to try and I suppose divide it into a few kind of areas and uh write down to individual
Action as well um and so it it might be a kind of amalgamation of some questions uh but we will try to get to as many as we can so there was quite a lot in the questions about uh plant-based eating versus meat Vicky you alluded to it in your presentation
About eating less meat but better meat um and one of the one of the people in the comments put about regeneratively produced beef lamb chicken so I guess that and whereas other questions were talking about you know commenting about really needing to see a shift to make plant-based eating the norm and make
That a public shift uh you know could we as Wildlife trust be making sure that we’re providing for that in events that we cater going more plant-based or considering where our food’s coming from from um so I guess the question is really about that yeah messaging of plant-based versus all meat eating is
Evil uh could you guys talk a little bit more about that maybe Vicky first yeah should I should I go first there yeah it’s very emotive and very difficult to talk to people so you have you need to talk to people carefully about it and
And I’m very much of the mind that we need to eat less and better and animals have a role to play but there is a big problem that the majority of the meat we eat is from very intensive factory farm systems um as we as in a nation um which
Has huge Animal Welfare antibiotics pesticide fertilizer problems because they’re all fed on on crops but switching in tely to intensively re intensively grown crops to produce plants for is not is not necessar the solution either what we’ve got is a huge opportunity here to build into really um
Good rotations legumes teas and beans which are great as proteins they’re fantastic at uh fixing nitrogen because they have nodules in their their Roots which fix nitrogen through nitrogen fixing bacteria complex complex soil wonderfulness um and th those crops can be a really fantastic part of a rotation
So building more complex rotations which is difficult Farmers big risk we need to drisk that but those can be wonderful plant bases for foods and you can have a bit of meat maybe you know having half and half be stew with lentils and I actually saw a lentil crop um with the
Wonderful wakelin Farm a few weeks ago lentils tiny L growing in Britain how brilliant is that so you know we could we have an opportunity here to to Really support Farmers doing that and reduce our use absolutely of meat where we don’t know it’s come from and Wildlife
Trust should not using meat where it doesn’t know where it’s come from and dairy um and and supporting the farmers doing it right and there is a big growth in direct sales and opportunities there well Tim F no I think you’ve you’ve said it I won’t add anymore let’s sort of
Move on this is a running running debate and we have to do it I mean there are some very interesting Trends young people are eating less meat and dairy um you know maybe generational shifts will occur um and you’re right Vicki’s absolutely right you know diet is
Incredibly emotional but um you know the hardliners of which I’m one just say events are going to change this events Dear Boy events and they’re coming you’ve just seen the impact of Ukraine you know people like me have been dribbling on about these things that our food system is
Incredibly incredibly fragile and they answer from the the big food company says no it doesn’t look we we everyone Co it was all perfect it was okay really uh 40 40% of households with two children in Britain uh the parents are going without food f one or two days a
Week or a month you know the data aren’t good actually depends which you look at so what people eat is shaped not just by their rights it’s shaped by events and uh well you health is part of those events people change when they have babies they change when they have a
Heart attack we’ve got to try and get better ways of changing than other big life experiences making people reconsider their diet and it won’t stop you getting your kids to school on time if change it won’t stop you you know your health you know all these things so
We need to have that conversation well let’s let’s thank you both let’s see if we can get another couple questions in there there was also a a a question um a couple questions actually and and one that that I had as well which was around
A mix of of politics and land use um I’ll start with Tim on this one one person asked a question about Labor’s promise of New Towns which I think you talked about you started a written answer to that yeah I WR I wrote that
Will that affect land use I had a I had a question about do do either of you have any hope that a change in government might enable better food policies in this country and there was also a question about uh with again land use more Farmland being purchased by lifestyle uh institutional environmental
Investors um how do we consider land use and and and and how does food production and and land resilience fit into that so it’s a sort of con convoluted question but I guess it’s about politics in terms of will change in government enable this sort of land use and food policy
Discussion to start and what’s the best way of of of us being involved in that I guess I’ll start with you Tim yeah very very quickly um this is a great question and one of the many reasons I say I’ll do things like this for you um is
Because you know there’s a really literate um constituency of which you’re part and I’m part which is now discussing these things it’s about weighing up um how do we juggle these complexities and get something for the public good without destroying the infrastructure on which we all depend um
And I I put in my reply Karen my written reply to whoever it was who who put this there was a land use framework we keep on being expect told is going to be coming and it keeps on not coming uh but we’ve got an election next year who knows labor has
Been very quiet frankly uh about it it’s been watching it it’s not helped that they’ve uh had a churn of the senior ministers but there is a constancy more of the junior Minister the junior Shadow ministers and there I think they’re beginning to get it they’re getting the fact that
Um Britain out of Europe has got to have a more grownup policymaking process uh we were actually very important players in the European Union and for me one of the sad things about leaving it is we’ve actually got what we’ve argued for for 30 years with the farm to Fork strategy
Britain needs a farm to Fork strategy itself and we haven’t got one Wales and Scotland are beginning to get them England is the problem so here we are in B barks and oxen uh there’s a key issue here and you’ve got to be rolling up your sleeves I’m going to be very
Political but nonp party political it’s just whoever is in government we have got to get that to take a land use more seriously and B connect it to food food and the environment and public health and they won’t do it because they’ll duck and dive that they being the
Politicians unless we make them do it we’ve got to have an alliance and I’ll be frank that’s one of the reasons I said I would do this uh for you because I think you people are really important uh of of to articulate what a better
What I’ve put in the chat what we call in Academia a multi criteria approach you don’t just say food’s good if it’s cheap or food’s good if it’s good for the environment or food’s good if it’s a low Dairy low meat diet we’ve got to have a multicriteria approach to food wherever
People are whatever diet they used to that we’re actually tiing more of the boxes than we’re doing at the moment and I personally I don’t know about Vicki more and more I come down to the fact that I think the future lies in shorter Supply chains we’re not going to get
More money to primary producers to do good horiculture or good meat and dairy culture unless they the primary producers get more money they get next to no money is what Vicki was rightly saying um I think shorter chains and more diverse chains may be one of the ways we’ve got to go
Nikki yeah should just actually I did write a report a few years ago um do you remember the last election was loads about trees tree planting is the answer to climate change you know and I wrote a report green and pressured land looking at all the different multi featured
Pressures on our land and we got you know um hs2 as well but house building obviously big one people are concerned about solar um so we need a land use framework we need a land use framework so that’s veloped with a in a democratic process and that is the last thing I
Think that’s been promised that’s still sort of hanging in there from the national food strategy Teresa Coffey said at the conservative pump conference that it’s coming in this quarter Tim let’s hold up our hands but I don’t expect much from it but also the labor party I was at the labor party
Conference and they also said that their policy is to do an a land use framework and a lot of other things as well like new entrance and all sorts of um cooperatives all sorts of interesting things but one thing that gave me a bit of Hope and I am party a political I’m
Not um advocating any party but Steve Reed the new secretary of state um Shadow Secretary of State um in labor gave a uh did one of the wildlife Wildlife trust Wildlife events and I would encourage you to watch that because um he may be bad I don’t know
When he comes in but he said some really good positive things about linking nature to health nature to environment nature to um their policies and it you know it get I at the end of that it was um I was quite uh positive and had a
Little bit of hope so watch that wildli which is up now on the wildli trust YouTube but there’s nothing more important than getting the land framework right all those questions are absolutely right and it’s not easy yeah I’m just gonna go for one more question I think because we need to uh
Move on to the the next session part of our session at in about three minutes time so I think we’ll just do one more question to both of you which is a lot of what we’ve talked about today um was this this quite big picture stuff policy agriculture systems
Government and I had written this question down as you were both speaking but somebody else put it in in the questions um themselves so I think we’ll end on this one which is let’s bring it down to an individual level if if if we as individuals want to bring about Food
Systems change in the UK what are the best steps we can take to start that um and if you guys can keep it reasonably brief apologies for that but but uh but yes the kind of practical steps that we can take as individuals I think might be a nice one to to finish
On should I go first yeah there’s that there’s that wonderful phrase eat food e eat less mostly plants that Michael poeno said you know in terms of what you eat you know eat food as in food that looks like food so all those kind of things you can
Do have a nature friendly diet and there’s a lot of advice online on that um eating better is is a good alliance to look at that as well but if you’re involved in food industry but also I I I said in my talk be an ambassador for
Nature um when you’re talking to people about food and why why it matters um for nature and also how you vote how you engage with your local and national government those three things and what you do in your garden as well matters so have a bit of a plan for when you when
You’re thinking of food yeah I’m just to add to that which I agree with um one of the things I’d like from a government is U sustainable dietary guidelines believe it or not we have nutrition guidelines they they get flouted they’re not taken seriously they should be but really we need sustainable
Dietry guidelines um the Nordic Council of ministers has shown that these things are possible it’s been highly contentious at the European level uh I’ve spent 20 years of my life on this uh but that’s one very simple thing it would make a lot of difference if contracts could be uh encouraged to deal
If you like both with calories and with carbon by having sustainable diet guidelines and the final point I make Karen is uh you know I’m originally trained as a psychologist so how I got into this I was interested I did my PhD partly on Neurosis about food and phobias
Uh but in an indirect way uh I think it’s really important to enjoy your food one of the great things that’s happened in Britain uh compared to when I came back as a child from India uh the British are less frightened of food they’ve become a bit more inventive but
It’s all been commercialized and commodified uh it’s it’s it’s made by Brands not by you and there’s a very important issue I think about feeling confident in our food and enjoying it actually um you know a plant-based diet uh is great and is important but there’s a danger there’s a commodification of a
Plant-based diet someone in the chat actually asked us Vicki could an ultra processed food be plant-based food or can a plant-based food be ultra processed the answer is yes we’re seeing them on the market you know if I may be very Frank crap and on that note a well known a
Well-known scientific term Ken techch on that note I enjoy here here here here to your last point about enjoying your food and uh and um and us all cooking a bit more it’s one of my own personal Hobbies so I’m I’m I’m all for it enjoy don’t start me there
Karen if you want to have a low carbon diet get it out of a factory her unit they can do it much better but that’s not the point the point is that’s that’s why I was saying we’ve got to have a multicriteria approach carbon must be reduced in what
We eat but also taking control over it and that’s probably about you know how do we cook and do we need to cook so much yes I I don’t like [Laughter] cooking discussion right right panel behave yourselves this is a good link a good link to Estelle here going back to
My report I’m may I say thank you so much to both Vicki and Tim and I’m really sorry to those of you we didn’t get a chance to get to all the questions we probably could have gone on all afternoon with this because there’s so many interesting points that came up and
So much content that you packed into your to your talk the the presentation is being recorded and and will be available afterwards so you will have time to digest Tim and Vicky’s slides and look more in depth at it but uh a big thank thank you once again to both
Vicki and Tim for your time today it’s been wonderful to have you here thank you both very much yeah yeah thank you very much I’ve been scribbling away and and definitely We rise to the to the challenge um so yes one for the team to take away and have a think about coming
Up to the next election you know this is a great opportunity actually to use this now to to put some pressure on all political parties so thank you I’m gonna go I’m afraid I’ve got to go it’s raining and I’ve got to get my washing in but
Bye everyone okay thank you guys thank you bye bye I’ve just had a take it away Estelle yeah well thank you very much thank you ever so much everybody right okay so Karen are you staying are you going or what are you up to I’m staying but to let you do talking
At this point okay okay all right well welcome everybody now to this last section of the afternoon I think that was absolutely inspirational the last two talks so um this is a lovely way to wrap up uh the session so we’re really pleased to run our popular photography
Competition again this year the contest invited people of all ages to take take amazing pictures of wildlife all scenery across the Three Counties or to capture people taking action for nature in their Community we also had a new category an urban nature category this year as well and we were quite overwhelmed I
Have to say to have so many wonderful entries with some truly stunning images of wildlife Landscapes and people in our area we had almost 450 photographs submitted across 12 categories which is just brilliant so as you can imagine it was a tough job for our judges and there
Was some deliberation as the standard was so high a big thank you to our sponsors GD Wildlife experiences and to wildlife photographer Steve Gods who kindly helped us judge the ENT is and has provided some Wildlife photography masterclass workshops for our winners and thanks also to chroma for helping
With printing we are also grateful to our editor of wildlife magazine Ben van heems and to bout’s website design officer Christini who used their eye for a good photo to help pick the winners so here’s a video from our judging panel to reveal this year’s category winners and Runners up Well on behalf of BAU I’d like to say a massive thank you to everybody that took part in the photo competition this year we had a few new categories which only meant an even wider range of wonderful Wildlife photos to select from it did not make the judging easy it’s great to
See people interested and taking action for wildlife both on their doorstep in their community and of course out at our nature reserves thank you Everyone you guys really don’t make it easy for us do you the quality this year has been exceptional what I’ve Loved is seeing photographs of people clearly passionate about Wild Life from all different age groups and it’s lovely to see entries from the children and teens
As well well it’s been such a a joy judging this and uh well you guys have really given us a hard job this year thanks so Much well we thought last year was hard this year’s been so much harder what’s blown me away this year is the insect category my passion is birds as most people know but this year the insects have just been amazing um the winners we’ve had to deliberate over many times
So well worthy winner at the end what you’ll wait and see but well done to everyone for Entering Oh Wow that’s truly TR really inspiring I have to say so congratulations to all of our winners some incredible photos there absolutely brilliant and I’d love to use some of those in our office so uh we’ll get around to that uh thanks to the judges as well that wasn’t an easy job
By any means um so now I have the lovely job of announcing the overall winner of B bounce photography competition 2023 so drum roll please and I will do that at home I’m delighted to announce that the overall winner of the bout photography competition 2023 and the
Winner of the insect category is Harry barks with his amazing close-up image of a beautiful wh legged damsel fly so Harry congratulations that was absolutely fantastic and the judges recognized the skill needed to take a photograph of this quality the detail is just stunning so a very well-deserved
Winner many congratulations to Harry who wins our top prize of a digital camera and an A3 print of his winning image and many congratulations then to everybody else all of our other winners and to everybody who took that took part and took their time to enter the competition
This year we’re pleased to say that the winning photographs will feature in our members wild magazine as well as a special bout calendar for 2024 which will be available to order through our online shop soon as well as Christmas cards and that time is coming winners
Will also be able to enjoy a special Wildlife photography masterclass with Steve from GG Wildlife experiences so for me it just remains to thank our wonderful speakers today and Professor Tim Lang and Vicky herd have really really fascinating and certainly it’s laid down the challenge to us and
The wildlife trust and other OS as well in that space who have a a kind of vested interest in thinking about Lang’s Frameworks for the future and how important food is in that um for People’s Health as much as anything and to to benefit nature we’re really grateful for your time
Today so thank you very much um and thank you to all of you who’ve joined this afternoon as well and for your support for bout and just remember we couldn’t do it without you so thank you enjoy the rest of your afternoon and I hope to see you very soon thank you