The Polycrisis Era:
In what feels like the era of polycrisis, we face a plethora of interconnected local and global crises – climate change, biodiversity loss, food security concerns paired with a persistent cost of living crisis, chronic mental and diet-related health issues and struggling local economies…to name a few! It is no wonder we can all feel a little pessimistic and apathetic about our ability to do anything to make things better. I’ve certainly felt overwhelmed more than a couple of times!
So I decided to see if there was something I could do. In attempt to shed light on where I might focus my energies, I took a step back and began to notice a theme, a thread that linked all of these issues.
That link was food.
Food & Our Environment:
The food we eat connects every single one of us to the natural world. With around 70% of the UK being farmed, our food choices and the food systems that deliver them, have a massive impact on our natural world. Land use, farming practices, food systems and their intended and unintended environmental impacts affect the health of ecosystems across fields, forests, rivers, seas and skies. We are not immune to these effects, these ecosystems are our home – our individual physical and collective health is inextricably linked with the health of our planet. A 2022 study by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science ranked the UK low for biodiversity, wellbeing and nature connectedness.
It appears no one is thriving right now.
Food & Our Health:
Citizen consumers are not immune to the influences of the wider food system. As the saying goes ‘you are what you eat’. Unhealthy food is costing the UK billions. The FFCC’s report, written by Professor Tim Jackson, on False Economy of Big Food outlined the health-related costs attributable Britain’s unhealthy food system amounts to £268 billion every year. An increasing body of research and policy is ‘connecting the dots’ on the health implications of food production methods, food inequality, food education, ultra processed foods and the nutritional density of what we eat. The Bionutrient Institute’s recent work on nutrient density of a range of crops found dramatic variation in nutrient density. Indicating not all food is equally nutritious. In partnership with Edacious their current study is exploring Nutrient Density in Beef ‘examining how farm management practices, genetics, soil health, forage quality, and the microbiome influence beef nutrient composition’.
Food Culture:
Changing food cultures have also impacted our wellbeing and communities. Despite advances in technology connecting us to everyone all the time – loneliness is on the rise. Food used to be a deeply social ritual in our daily lives; only a generation ago we shopped in our local towns/villages, bought from independent businesses, bumping into friends and acquaintances. We ate food that was local and in season, regularly cooking from scratch and regularly gathering around the kitchen table to eat together. Now many of these social food rituals have fallen victim to our busy lives, replaced by convenience, ultra processed foods, home delivery, eating prepared meals on our knees in front of Netflix.
A Consolidated Food System:
In England, just 8% of farms (7,600 farm businesses) produce 62% of all economic agricultural output, while using only 33% of agricultural land. The consolidated food system has resulted in a trend towards farm intensification and scale in order to supply them, impacting our environment and rural places. Many smaller family farms, supporting rural businesses and local small infrastructure struggling to compete amid tight margins, imports, labour shortages, regulations, policy changes, and market volatility.
But bigger isn’t always better. Tim Lang’s recent report on the UK’s food security highlights risks posed by the current consolidation in our food system – whilst the system appears reliable, it is in fact quite fragile. His report makes the case for more robust, distributed, regional and local food systems to provide better resilience and food security.
But enough about all the bad stuff….
Food, the Great Connector:
Food and our food systems are inextricably linked with the health of our bodies, wallets, wellbeing and that of our local places and the environment.
Just stop and think for a second, through sunlight, water and our soils plants grow, animals grow – the abundance of the natural world provides the gift of food. A gift we enjoy three times a day, everyday. Receiving a gift from anyone creates a social contract, an imperative honour that gift and reciprocate. To give back.
In Nick Hayes book Wild Service I came across a beautiful essay by Nadia Shaikh, on Recommoning. She succinctly expressed a new approach to our engagement with the natural world:
“Recommoning is a different way of looking our collective relationship with land as we currently know it. It involves everyone in actions required to restore nature through service. It is designing systems so that even though a person might not have ‘warden’ in their job title or their name in title deeds to a piece of the earth, we still have agency to be a guardian and can practically do something to contribute. It is how the emotional investment of knowing the ecosystem around us can be channelled into contribution, and not simply watching from behind a fence of bird hide.”
Local food and the systems that deliver it, are the channel through which we citizens can become collective stewards of local landscapes. Every 1 in 10 pounds we spend are on food and non-alcoholic drinks. This presents an opportunity to engage in food citizenship, voting with our pounds for the food systems that nourish our bodies, communities, local places and ecosystems. Through food purchasing, citizens can vote daily for the future we want to see.
Think Global, Act Local
Through my local food systems work, I have attend conferences, read numerous books, reports and listen to many different voices across the local food scene. I couldn’t ignore the challenges of small family farms – succession planning, subsidy and tax changes, volatile weather and climate change, alongside increased input and operational costs, to name a few. In response to these challenges, some farms are looking to various forms of diversification to improve profitability and resilience.
I help wanted to focus on an element that felt important to the local farming community in Cumbria. The majority of the Lake District landscape classified as grassland and there is a rich heritage of smaller scale livestock farming in our fells and valleys. For many of these farms, establishing direct meat sales enterprises could provide a valuable additional revenue stream and opportunities to create a local supply to feed their community.
With some local farms already offering local meat, reporting that demand was outstripping supply, alongside an appetite from other farms to establish new enterprises, this felt like an important area of focus.
Hence this project sort of found me, this report seeks to explore this part of the local food system, to understand its challenges and the opportunities to create an effective and resilient a local food system.
Want to find out more…