Our excellent @FFC_Commission commissioners @BrowningHelen and @JudithBatchelar on #R4today summarising the complexities and risks in the food system, why we are where we are and - importantly - what we need to do next
Invest in local production - farmers and growers need support to invest in sustainable technologies, knowledge, land and logistics to grow and sell more of the healthy fruit and veg we need.
Retailers need to improve their contracts to share risk and rewards with farmers and growers more fairly
Public procurement of UK fruit veg and sustainably grown UK food provides a consistent route to local markets, and gives people in schools and hospitals local healthy food
Local, smaller producers need the facilities - packing and logistics - to get their produce to market - more co-ops and partnerships can make this more cost effective and efficient
Work in the sector - from planting and picking, to cooking and serving - needs to be better planned, organized and rewarded - including more international permits for workers
The sector needs proper investment - not just in the shiny new tech, but in the land, knowledge, facilities and skills on which all this depends.
Most important of all - we need much better UK planning for the long term impacts of the climate, water, nature, global and economic crises. These problems aren’t going away any time soon.
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A bit of a long thread here on the leaked food strategy.
So it reads like it shares many aspirations with its critics. More regenerative, carbon and nature positive farming, with support to farmers and food business to innovate to tackle big global issues;
making it easier for everyone to get good food in healthy food environments; UK leadership for a more sustainable global food system and progressive trade relationships; making better, more transparent decisions about how we use our scarce resources fairly, particularly land.
Big However: this is a govt that is reluctant to intervene in markets. And yet it is global food 'markets’ that are stacking up more problems for government, mainly by externalising the true costs of their operating models.