Will the public consultation on deregulating GMOs deliver?

“Public consultation.”

Two words destined to send most people desperately scrolling for videos of cats doing funny things, or lists of the top 10 ‘must eat’ lockdown comfort foods.

And yet public consultations have meaning – or at least they should.

On 7 January the UK government launched a public consultation into the deregulation of crops and farm animals created using gene editing.

Gene editing is a new and largely experimental genetic engineering technology. We don’t know what its uses or impacts on health or the environment might be. This is because only two gene-edited crops are being grown commercially anywhere in the world: a herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape (SU Canola) and a soybean with an altered fatty acid profile. Both have had only very limited uptake in North America.

In spite of wide-ranging promises made by Defra Minister George Eustice when he launched the consultation at this year’s Oxford Farming Conference, there is no evidence gene-editing will produce more nutritious, better yielding crops and healthier animals, that it will reduce costs to farmers and impacts on the environment, or that it will help agriculture meet the challenges of climate change.

This makes the government’s continued focus on genetic engineering as a sustainabilityquick win’ all the more baffling. But that focus is also a threat to building an agroecological future that draws much-needed attention – and funding – away from truly sustainable solutions.

Beyond GM is currently collaborating with GM Freeze, as part of a Farming the Future funded initiative, to raise awareness of, and respond to, those threats. Part of that initiative includes a response to the consultation.

Three pillars

Our response to the consultation has three pillars:

• Responding to the consultation on its own terms

• Demonstrating public opposition to de-regulation

• Undermining the legitimacy of the consultation

Aware that the majority of UK citizens oppose GM but may not have, at their fingertips, the high levels of “evidence” the Defra consultation is requiring, we have produced advice to the public which sits on both the Beyond GM and GM Freeze websites. This helps those who wish to respond navigate the question and the issues they raise. This has been accompanied by shared social media visuals and a short video.

The initiative is also reaching out to Defra, the Food Standards Agency (and its Scottish equivalent Food Standards Scotland), to MPs and Peers who may be supportive, to actors in the devolved nations, to animal welfare and consumer groups and to those involved in countryside and conservation.

We’ve also created a core email group where those involved in responding to the consultation can update each other on activities and ask for support.

A concrete outcome of this group was that Beyond GM and Slow Food in the UK took the lead in producing a joint letter to major UK supermarkets, asking them to support strong regulation and make a clear statement that they will not stock foods made from unregulated and unlabelled gene-edited plants and animals.

The letter very quickly gained support from more than 50 UK organisations – and not just the usual suspects. Alongside the Soil Association and the Landworkers’ Alliance it was also signed by Green Christian, Students for Sustainability and numerous academics, among them Professor Emeritus of Food Policy at City University, Tim Lang.

This initiative has received a lot of social media support and is now picking up media attention, especially in high-readership trade magazines such as Retail Times, The Grocer and Natural Products News.

We’ve now received an unequivocal response from the Co-Op saying that its policy of prohibiting GM will extend to gene-editing, which was covered in the Daily Mail. We are in discussion with other retailers and have stepped up our outreach to supermarkets now by offering to facilitate bespoke online briefings with their teams.

Beyond GM is also co-hosting a Farmer’s Assembly in collaboration with the ETC group. Farmers are so often left out of the discussion and we fear their voices could be lost if they don’t respond to the consultation. This online meeting will be a chance to connect with peers and hear a variety of views. We hope it will be the first of more assemblies and that it will inform and support our work on responding to the threat that genome editing poses to agroecology.

Each of these actions helps respond to the consultation on its own terms and demonstrate public opposition to deregulation. But the government has also made some key missteps that provide an opportunity to undermine the legitimacy of the consultation.

A flawed process

Beyond GM has submitted a complaint to Defra Minister George Eustice about the process of the consultation. Our complaint lists the multiple ways in which the consultation is not being conducted in line with Cabinet Office Consultation Principles.

Perhaps the most important of these Principles states that: “Consultations should have a purpose. Do not consult for the sake of it” and that government should “not ask questions about issues on which you have already formed a final view”.

The government has clearly formed a final view and this alone makes the consultation a hollow exercise.

Public consultations are also supposed to be targeted, easy to understand and to respond to. They are also supposed to be informative, providing enough information to ensure that those consulted understand the issues and can give informed responses. They should also include “validated impact assessments of the costs and benefits of the options being considered when possible.”

This consultation does not meet any of these acid tests. It is notable that, in addition to complaints from the general public, we have come across researchers working in this area who find the entire consultation heavy going and/or who have failed to understand what it is actually about.

Ministers are not, of course, obliged to respond to complaints from civil society or citizens. But the fact that George Eustice and Defra Permanent Secretary Tamara Finkelstein have not acknowledged the letter at all, let alone responded to the serious concerns raised, is indicative of a level of contempt for civil society and the general public we find baffling.

We believe that the process could have been so much better – and still could be. We remain committed to trying to have that discussion with the government.

Hasty recklessness

Politically speaking there is an awful lot going on in the UK’s food, farming and environment sphere at the moment. It’s easy to dismiss gene editing as just one of many topics. But it’s worth remembering that, for the UK government, gene editing is the key tool in the ‘sustainability tool box’ and deregulation is essential to put that tool to use.

For the UK to consider removing regulatory controls from an entire class of genetically engineered products is, at best, hasty and at worst, reckless. Even those who have a more positive attitude to GM have signalled this belief to us.

Prior to the launch of the consultation, we, and others, made repeated requests to Defra to understand and even feed into the scope of the consultation before its launch. We received no responses.

Such a heads up would have signalled the government’s willingness to have a dialogue and would have helped us organise our own thoughts and preparations. But, in the end, civil society was given less than 24 hours’ notice of the launch of the consultation which runs for just 10 weeks (instead of the usual 12) until 17 March.

Ten weeks is no time at all to accelerate from zero to a full-blown awareness-raising campaign and yet this is what we have had to do.

It’s also not time enough for anyone other than those who have already formed an opinion to make a considered response to a complex issue.

The outcome is by no means written in stone, but the government’s hasty recklessness has served to exclude the general public, reinforce the same old battle lines and foment the same old divisive discussions that have stymied us all for years.

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Author: Pat THomas

Director of Beyond GM. She is a journalist and the author of multiple books on environment, health and food. Pat is a former editor of the Ecologist magazine and has also sat on the boards of the Soil Association and the Organic Research Centre.

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Farming The Future 2020 - The Funded Projects

Photo from CoFarm Foundation

Farming the Future fosters a culture of collaboration through pooled grant making to strengthen the ecosystem of the food and farming movement.

We are addressing our broken food system, with the objective to instil systemic resilience, and fortify the movement.

Farming the Future is funding the following strategic partnerships and innovative projects through its Year 2 Grant-pool.  

The grants recognise the benefits of, and threats to, the regenerative farming movement. They work to safeguard and strengthen agroecology and its principles from practise to policy. 

The 16 projects summarised below span across local and national issues, through initiatives that tackle complex issues, such as connecting economics, education, land access, policy, and social justice.

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Safeguarding agroecology: responding to the risk of genetic modification

Lead organisation: Beyond GM

Project partner: GM Freeze

As post-Brexit farming and food policies make their way through parliament, the government’s position on genetic modification (GM) has become quietly clearer and increasingly concerning. Presenting agroecological practices as tools that could help build on the Net Zero and National Food strategies, the movement as a whole is being undermined by its deconstruction and the proposed role of GM technology. 

Photo from Beyond GM

Appearing in the ‘Health and Harmony’ vision for ‘Future Farming Policy’, GM is widely accepted as incompatible with agroecology’s social and environmental principles. Yet the debate about GM has gradually gone silent over the last decade, whilst support from government and some NGOs has steadily grown. 

This project aims to reignite a dialogue, re-establish common ground, and rebuild a unified, integrated campaign, bringing together a wide coalition of farmers, scientists, civil society groups, and other consumer bodies. A report will be published in order to create awareness and engagement, which will include research on the threats and vulnerabilities posed to the agroecology and community food sectors. A clear and reinvigorated message will aim to influence public, industry and MP’s opinions at a critical moment, as the government consults them on the use of GM.

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Supporting small-scale and agroecological farmers

Lead organisation: Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Network UK

Project partners: Landworkers Alliance (LWA), Organic Growers Alliance (OGA), Gaia Foundation (Seed Sovereignty UK and Ireland Programme

A project that was initially supported by Farming the Future’s Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund, this collaborative of small-scale agroecological farming membership organisations, provides support to their members across the industry. The coordinated programme included webinars and other online resources which provided much needed business advice for many producers attempting to adapt to the crisis and keep people well fed.

Proving extremely popular, the initiative also expanded awareness and connections across the regenerative farming movement. Knowledge and resources were made more accessible, whilst opportunities opened up for members from different organisations, regions and sectors to communicate and share knowledge. These conversations gave rise to bigger questions and ideas about how the network could address complex issues around access to food, targeted business support, food sovereignty and social justice .

To address these gaps, a new 2-year programme will support ongoing collaboration between the original partners, with the addition of Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty UK & Ireland network. Free monthly webinars and 12 focus groups will delve deeper into the subjects that will inform further packages of support, whilst the connections this programme creates may last long into the future of farming in the UK.

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Less and better meat for local authorities

Lead organisation: Eating Better

Project Partners: Sustainable Food Trust, Sustain

Eating Better is an alliance of over 60 civil society organisations that are working towards a more sustainable and healthy British food industry and culture. With a target of achieving a 50% reduction and overall improvement of the standard of meat and dairy consumed in the UK by 2030, the alliance has identified public food procurement as a key lever for making this transition.

Public bodies have the potential to provide a broad demographic with well produced food. This could help to increase awareness and understanding of the relationships between health and sustainability. Raising standards here could also set a precedent for wider local food supply chains and economies. With many local authorities trying to address the climate and ecological emergency, food presents an opportunity to do so whilst also addressing other health crises, such as obesity and diabetes.

To aid sustainable meat procurement, the project partners will collaborate on a proposition for local authorities. Pooling their strengths and expertise, the guidance will give insight into sustainability from the farm through to procurement processes. The project may also provide a blueprint for this strategy and shareable resources that can be used in future initiatives from the coalition.

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Scaling Up Community-owned Land for Agroecology

Lead organisation: Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC)

Project Partners: The Scottish Farm Land Trust (SFLT), Community Shares Scotland (CSS)

Since 2009, the Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC) has acquired smallholdings for 15 new farms along with a wealth of knowledge about agroecological growing projects. They receive a constant stream of enquiries from many people wishing to set up their own local growing projects but are only occasionally able to partner with other organisations due to capacity.

The ELC were approached by the Scottish Farm Land Trust (SFLT), who wish to facilitate agroecological farming across Scotland by purchasing land to rent out affordably. With over half a million acres in Scotland in community ownership, very few groups are focused on agriculture. SFLT hopes to launch a community share offer with Community Shares Scotland (CSS), a network of 300 community-led organisations, to fund its first land purchase by the end of 2021.

ELC will act as a consultant to SFLT on land purchase, business models, tenancy agreements, planning permission, site management, recruitment, administration and more. The project hopes to showcase progressive land reform policy and community ownership models. In the process, ELC will consolidate information as the basis of a toolkit for others wishing to secure land for agroecological community projects.

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A national network of agroforestry farms 

Lead organisation: The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust

Project partners: The Organic Research Centre, The Woodland Trust, The National Trust, The Agricology Project, The Woodmeadow Trust, The Farm Woodland Forum

One of the solutions proposed by the government to achieve Net Zero carbon by 2050 is to plant at least 30 000 ha of trees per year. 50% of these are designated for farming land. Yet the UK’s domestic food production has rapidly declined over the last 40 years, threatening food security and sovereignty. Large-scale tree planting has the potential to reduce production even further, and could contribute to the climate and ecological crisis it aims to avert.

photo of Wakelyns by Agricology

As a result of previous agricultural policy putting tree-planting in conflict with subsidies, the UK has one of lowest levels of woodland in Europe. New agricultural policy has the potential to meet multiple objectives for food production and environmental protection. Whilst mixed cropping systems are more complex to manage, they can produce a wider range of food and fuel, greater resilience to climate and market challenges, and rural employment.

This project aims to promote agroforestry as a way of farmers and landowners simultaneously and sustainably growing food, transitioning into the new ELM Scheme and contributing to ‘public goods’. The project will showcase farms and initiatives across the UK successfully balancing these objectives to share knowledge and evidence of the value of agroforestry. Content for educational and promotional resources to be shared with UK growers and potentially influence a national pilot as well as future policy.

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Building the Northern Real Farming Network

Project lead: LESS (Lancaster District) CIC

Project partners: Permaculture Association, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Network, Real Farming Trust

The climate, landscape, hydrology, soils and history of the North of England give it unique habitats, farming traditions and food cultures. These present particular challenges and opportunities for significant contribution to a food system that works for its landscapes and inhabitants. This year, the organisers of the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) produced the first Northern Real Farming Conference (NRFC), through an online programme of events about economic democracy, food sovereignty and agroecology.

This grant will support the development and delivery of NRFC events alongside the ORFC, which is at capacity and much less accessible to farmers in the North. Project partners will connect key stakeholders in the North to expand the reach of NRFC, build the network and understand the community’s needs, practices and models. Following in the footsteps of ORFC as a catalyst for food system change, NRFC aims to bring more people together to share ideas and solutions to environmental, economic and social issues through a growing, national regenerative food movement.

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Jumping Fences: addressing the barriers to agroecological farming for BPOC in Britain

Project lead: Land In Our Names (LION)

Project partners: Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC), Landworkers Alliance (LWA)

Black people and people of colour (BPOC) are widely under-represented in British agricultural, environmental and horticultural sectors; this project seeks to know why. The collaborative are to find and identify the barriers facing BPOC, particularly those who have established or are considering a land-based livelihood in Britain. The research will inform practical and policy solutions that work to increase BPOC’s access to land and land-based enterprises.

photo by Land in Our Names

By mapping existing and aspiring BPOC-led farming businesses and organisations, the project aims to share experiences, skills and information with BPOC who may wish to join a growing community of new entrants. A series of workshops based on the research will also be delivered for the agroecological community so that it might consider ways to better support BPOC in securing land access and enterprise.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, many organisations approached LION in the hope of understanding and tackling a lack of participation from BPOC in the agroecology movement. Dedicated time and resources for the BPOC community to facilitate this are needed. The grant strengthens the capacity of LION - a relatively new organisation, to carry out this work and is supported through the collaboration with LWA and ELC.

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Cultivating Justice

Project lead: Land In Our Names (LION)

Project partners: Landworkers Alliance (LWA), Farmerama

Exploring the intersections of complex, historical, socio-economic and cultural issues that underlie an agricultural sector built on colonialism, patriarchy and neoliberalism, this project will work towards a more diverse movement with a stronger position for marginalised groups in farming. Addressing. the underrepresentation of BPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals and women in agriculture, land ownership and access, the collaboration aims to deepen agroecology’s roots in social justice.

Each project partner’s wide-reaching relationships and understanding of underrepresented communities will be brought together to produce a series of podcasts, workshops, events and publications. These will cover topics relevant to BPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals and women. Excavating the farming ancestry of Britain to unearth, uplift and amplify positive stories from the community, this project will form Cultivating Justice’s identity and resources. 

In order to accurately portray social justice issues and their intersectionality, the voices of marginalised groups will contribute towards a changing narrative. By sharing these messages, the project aims to build and strengthen a collective vision for social justice within regenerative food, farming and land systems.

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Agroecology Research Collaboration (ARC)

Project lead: Landworkers Alliance (LWA)

Project partners: Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC), Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Network, Organic Growers Alliance (OGA)

The Agroecology Research Collaboration (ARC) is a co-ordinated coalition that will amplify the voice of agroecology in the UK. A response to the influx of research requests from bodies outside of the movement, the ARC will provide the much needed capacity to meet demand.

Agroecological practitioners and grassroots organisations need to be able to actively develop and steer the research agenda. The ARC will enable key, like-minded organisations to manage relationships with research institutions in a collaborative way that is beneficial to the movement as a whole.

The ARC will take a proactive and strategic approach, employing a research coordinator to produce robust and rigorous research, liaise between organisations, and find sustainable funding streams to become self-sufficient. This collective effort aims to give UK agroecological movement widespread representation externally, whilst making it more effective and transparent internally.

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Preventing trade deals from weakening UK pesticide standard

Project lead: Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK

Project Partners: Sustain, Dr Emily Lydgate, Sussex University

This project aims to protect human and environmental health by preventing the lowering of pesticide standards that could result from post-Brexit trade deals. The campaign builds on the public and political momentum successfully created by the Toxic Trade report, produced from the groups’ previous Farming The Future funded project. With a huge amount of value brought to the campaign and organisations through this collaboration, the partners will continue working to expose threats posed by pesticides in the next two years of UK trade negotiations.

Bringing together NGOs and academia to research pesticide policy, a trade law expert adds impact to the NGO’s combined experience and expertise across environment, health, trade and policy. A YouGov poll has shown that any weakening of standards would be very unpopular, whilst the project’s research has been referenced in parliament and PAN UK has been invited to become a formal stakeholder of the Department for International Trade.

PR, a public petition and parliamentary lobbying will aim to prevent deregulation of pesticides on imported produce, which would protect UK farmers in maintaining high standards whilst remaining competitive and accessible to lower income households. The campaign will also continue to build on its research into the potential impact of trade with more countries and continue scrutinising the government’s pesticide policy.

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Sharing knowledge on how to work with nature to reduce pesticide use

Project lead: RSPB

Project Partners: Soil Association, Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK, CoFarm Foundation

Last year, Farming the Future funded a collaboration to reduce pesticide related harms - work which has been building momentum and will now continue with a focus on policy, advocacy and public awareness. The ongoing project will provide knowledge and support needed by farmers in reducing their use of pesticides, and produce evidence of the economic and ecological impacts of doing so.

Reducing pesticides requires new ways of farming with nature, rather than against it. Farming with fewer chemicals produces more resilient yields whilst also protecting essential ecosystems. Many farmers already doing this could become advocates and provide peer-to-peer support.

This phase of the project will investigate natural crop protection practises and the support needed for it. Case studies and webinars will be produced by and for farmers. Stories of substantial transitions to more sustainable land management will help farmers and policy-makers understand how and why nature-friendly solutions are beneficial both now and in the future. 

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Reforming Red Tractor to drive pesticide reduction

Project lead: Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK

Project Partners: Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), RSPB

Red Tractor is the UK’s largest food standards scheme, with 46,000 British farmer as members. Red Tractor will review its standards next year, which presents an opportunity to influence this widely adopted certification framework. Setting out to reduce UK farmers’ use of pesticides and Integrated Pest Management (IPM), this project will encourage nature-based IPM practises that protect the health of people, wildlife and the environment.

Photo by PAN UK

According to research by the Soil Association, consumers are increasingly concerned about the impact of pesticides on their health, farmers and the environment. The UK’s top supermarkets are trying to reduce pesticides in their supply chains - many of them working with PAN UK to strengthen their policies. Red Tractor certification is often used to prove they’re doing all they can to ensure suppliers are using pesticides responsibly.

An analysis of the Red Tractor’s pesticide and IPM standards will involve consultations with the Nature Friendly Farming Network and UK supermarkets. A set of recommendations will then be presented to Red Tractor before being published. By bringing together key stakeholders in the discussion on reductions of pesticide use, the cooperation and coverage of such a high profile negotiation hopes to achieve a widespread improvement on baseline pesticide standards. 

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Measuring and communicating on-farm sustainability

Lead organisation: Sustainable Food Trust

Project Partners: Royal Agricultural University, Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group South West (FWAG SW), Eating Better

The ability to measure sustainability is vital for upholding policy and market frameworks that support a fair, harmonious food system by rewarding farmers for producing food sustainably and regeneratively. However, it is challenging to capture and communicate these complex, interconnected measures.

These organisations are currently working on different ways of measuring sustainability and natural capital. They will work together on this project to harmonise their frameworks and develop communication resources. They will look at the ways in which their frameworks align and complement one another, to create a clear, joined-up process for collecting data on farms. This aims to accelerate and increase their combined impact.

Trials of this new framework will produce case studies which will be presented to government and food businesses as evidence of industry and public needs for an international measure of sustainability. This data can be used for many purposes, from reporting on delivery of ‘public goods’, to helping companies and consumers make informed choices. COP26 and the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 are opportune moments to make the case for a global standard for on-farm sustainability, which aims to be achieved by this broad coalition and its unified message.

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Influencing policy to support farm woodland and agroforestry from the ground-up

Project lead: Soil Association

Project partners: The Organic Research Centre, Landworkers Alliance (LWA), The Farm Woodland Forum

Photo by Soil Association

The ongoing development of the UK’s agricultural policies involves reshaping farming subsidies to reward ‘public goods’ rather than the amount of land that’s farmed. Yet the barriers to agroforestry posed by the outgoing Common Agricultural Policy need dismantling urgently in oder to to get it incorporated into new policies including the ELM Scheme. 

These organisations are involved in various ELMS tests and trials, which have revealed the lack of awareness and understanding of agroforestry across the board. This project will proactively share the findings on the benefits of agroforestry for climate, nature and health, and share them effectively with policy makers. 

Combining research, coordinating advisory workshops and creating resources, the partnership will support stakeholders to deliver compelling evidence to policy makers, media and the public. A collaborative effort hopes to engage a diverse network of stakeholders in order to form a focused and united voice that will utlimately influence policy decisions on agroforestry.

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Fringe Farming: increasing access to public land for peri-urban farming

Project lead: Sustain

Project Partners*: Shared Assets, Landworkers Alliance (LWA), Sheffood, Bristol Food Producers (with support from Bristol Food Network), Glasgow Community Food Network, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)

*There will also be additional support for this work from OrganicLea, Better Food Traders, The Orchard Project, and Ecological Land Cooperative.

A new wave of market gardens on the edges of towns and cities could cultivate more regenerative food, green jobs, natural capital, shorter supply chains, resilient local economies and sustainable livelihoods. These outcomes would address the climate and nature emergency, improve access to nature and provide opportunities for diverse groups who may face barriers to accessing land.

Forty Hall Farm, photo by Sustain

A series of pilot projects will demonstrate how peri-urban food production can meet multiple political objectives. Engaging with local councils, landowners and influencers, the partners will work to unlock peri-urban land for agroecological food growing. Stakeholders in 4 areas will collect data to support the position of peri-urban farming on local and national Climate Change policy agendas. The project will test the actions councils can take and help local groups take the practical steps to grow food.

Building on a previous initiative run in Enfield, many of the organisations involved are actively engaged with food policy. The collaboration will take a localised approach to create national impact. Combining expertise in campaigns, research, forums, and local action, the partners have a track record of working together and the efforts of this collaboration will contribute to their shared vision of a green renaissance.

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Rootz into Food Growing

Project lead: The Ubele Initiative

Project Partners: Black Rootz, OrganicLea, Land In Our Names (LION)

The Rootz into Food Growing (RiFG) project aims to identify and disrupt some of the structural inequalities and barriers to food justice faced by Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities in the UK. A dearth of opportunities exist across the UK for BAME growers, despite a legacy of allotment growing since the 1950s. People from BAME communities in London have been found to be 4 times as likely to experience food insecurity under Covid-19.

Photo by Ubele

This project will build a network of new and experienced BAME growers from across London to exchange skills. Successful participants will be offered further learning opportunities and support to establish and develop a social enterprise. A research study by LION will identify and capture data and stories from the growers in order to identify gaps and opportunities. It will also seek out at least two new boroughs with land for RiFG to expand to.

Ubele is well placed to influence policy as a BAME infrastructure group appointed by the Mayor of London, and a national partner of ‘Power to Change’ - a community enterprise strategy. Working to build and promote a more culturally diverse food sector, the project aims to generate more awareness and understanding of the challenges and contributions of BAME growers. It exists to encourage and help people from the community to create sustainable livelihoods from commercial food production in light of these challenges.

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Who Feeds Us?

This Spring, Farming The Future launched a Coronavirus emergency response fund: a collaboration between The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation, offering financial support for initiatives that rose to meet the immediate crisis whilst building longer-term resilience. One of the those to receive funding was the award-winning podcast, Farmerama, for a new series called ‘Who Feeds Us?’ A collection of stories about some of the people who produce our food, the 6-part series explores what it takes to feed and nourish communities in the time of a pandemic. The experiences of growers, suppliers, academics, activists, authors and chefs, offers insight into how food that is nourishing for people and the planet might be made accessible to all. The podcast is produced by Jo Barratt, Abby Rose, and Katie Revell, with a team of 23 people, brought together by advisor Dee Woods. Illustrations by Hannah Grace

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Who feeds us? Episode #1: The Hungry Gap

Whilst the UK went into lockdown this March, supermarket shelves stood empty and many people began to question how we might feed ourselves. The idea of localised food systems went from being a distant dream to a substantial means of sustenance for many people across the country. So, who and what made up those localised food systems? Where did this sudden burst of community provision come from?

Episode #1 covers many corners of the food system, from those supplying high-end restaurants to those on the frontline of emergency food responses. Talking about how their relationships within the industry and community helped them to face new and existing challenges, we hear from farmer, Jane Scotter and chef, Skye Gyngell; from Angus Buchanan-Smith in Scotland, who grew his farm-to-table restaurant into a CSA scheme and education project; from two London beekeepers, Salma and Khalil Attan, who divulge some of the benefits of lockdown for bees; and from Ursula Myrie, founder of Sheffield community food project - the Food Pharmacy.

As the COVID-19 lockdown hit the UK in early 2020, our nation suddenly looked very different. Supermarket shelves were empty and, for the first time in most people's lives, we started to question how we were going to feed ourselves, and our families. Almost overnight, localised food systems went from being niche fantasies to a vital source of sustenance for many people around the country. But who – and what – made up those localised food systems? Where did this sudden burst of community provision come from? In this episode we hear from four very different corners of the food system. From people supplying high-end restaurants to people on the frontlines of emergency food response. They all share what the lockdown meant for them and their communities, as well as how what they are doing helps feed us every day – the strength of close farm-restaurant relationships, the difficulties dairy farmers have faced in the last few decades, the health benefits of local honey, and the need for culturally appropriate food. All of these stories begin to hint at what a food system woven with dignity might look like. This is only part 1; we will be meeting each of these people again in the final episode to hear their visions for the future and what’s next for those who feed us. As we learn in many different ways throughout this series: Food is not just a question of calories. Food is nourishment for the body and soul. Food is about community, culture and our relationship with each other and with the Earth. We are all the food system. Interviews with Skye Gyngell https://springrestaurant-shop.co.uk/ Jane Scotter http://fernverrow.com/ Angus Buchanan-Smith https://www.the-free-company.com/ Salma & Khalil Attan ttps://www.bushwoodbees.co.uk/ // https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVrsm10F2zp_KO26MBCGRUw Ursula Myrie https://www.adira.org.uk/ Farmerama.co Producer: Suzie McCarthy Executive Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose Additional Interviews: Lovejit Dhaliwal Community Collaborators: Cathy St Germans, Zain Dada, Col Gordon Artwork: Hannah Grace www.hgraceoc.com/ Music: Michael O'Neil PR & Comms: Fran Bailey, Kate Lam, Elma Glasgow, Nancy Brownlow Who Feeds Us? is possible thanks to the Farming the Future COVID Response Fund. We’re very grateful to The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation for providing the funds to make this project happen.

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Who Feeds Us? #2: Land, Animal, Journey

Episode #2 asks how the pandemic has changed the people who care for the animals that feed us, exploring how it has impacted their relationships with work and their communities. How have the perspectives of those producing fish, cheese and meat in the UK been affected by their experiences of the pandemic, and how are they adapting to life in lockdown?

First crossing the Irish Sea to Ballylisk in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, we meet Dean Wright, a dairy farmer and cheese-maker who began to deliver milk and other artisan products to his local community at the onset of lockdown. Heading to Wales, we hear from Muhsen Hassanin, a smallholder and halal slaughter-man who provides regeneratively farmed meat to Muslims across the UK. And lastly, we meet John Martin Tulloch, a fishmonger in the Shetland Isles who lost his international market, but fortunately found a new customer base much closer to home.

American poet and farmer Gary Snyder writes of the interconnectedness and interdependence of the food chain. He says, “To acknowledge that each of us at the table will eventually be part of the meal is not just being ‘realistic.’ It is allowing the sacred to enter and accepting the sacramental aspect of our shaky temporary personal being.” In this episode, we explore the ways in which a growing consciousness is developing around food, based on ideas of reverence, and gratitude. How have the people who care for the animals that feed us – both in life and in death – changed during this time of crisis? How has the way they understand the future of food been altered by the pandemic, and their own responses to it? How do they see their own place in that future? Who Feeds Us? is a celebration of these key workers, a thank you and a call to action – so we don’t forget just how ‘key’ they are. Featuring: Dean Wright: https://www.ballyliskofarmagh.com/ Muhsen Hassanin: https://abrahamshalalmeat.com/ John Martin Tulloch: https://www.tasteofshetland.com/producers/island-fish-shetland-ltd Farmerama.co Producer: Phil Smith Executive Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose Community Collaborators: Zain Dada, Col Gordon, Fern Towers Artwork: Hannah Grace https://www.hgraceoc.com/ Music: Michael O'Neil Project Manager: Olivia Oldham PR & Comms: Fran Bailey, Kate Lam, Elma Glasgow, Nancy Brownlow Who Feeds Us? is possible thanks to the Farming the Future COVID Response Fund. We’re very grateful to The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation for providing the funds to make this project happen.

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Who Feeds Us? #3: Growing Our Own

As supermarkets struggled to restock fruit and veg, the idea of ‘growing your own’ took on new significance. To grow your own food, the first thing you need are seeds. For centuries farmers saved their seeds, which adapted to their environments and created local varieties. With the development of commercial seeds that can’t be harvested or re-sown, crops grew less resilient and sustainable. Now, by preserving open-pollinated seeds, communities around the world are helping to ensure their own food security in the face of a climate crisis as well as the current pandemic.

Episode #3 begins in the Midlands, where we hear from Astrid Guillabeau, a Birmingham-based mother who began asking how we can grow our own food in cities. Then it’s over to Walsall-based landworker and founder of No Diggity Gardens, Neville Portas, on the importance of self-sufficiency for his community. In London we hear from Dee Woods, activist and co-founder of Granville Community Kitchen, about the importance of human connection and empowerment through growing food. And lastly, we meet Helene Schulze, a passionate seed saver who tells us why seed sovereignty is vital for a resilient food future.

As lockdown came into effect, and supermarkets struggled to restock their fruit and vegetable aisles, the idea of “growing your own” took on a new significance. In towns and cities across the UK, those of us lucky enough to have access to gardens or balconies – even if we’d never grown anything before – suddenly started looking for compost, tools, and seeds. Many of us discovered, perhaps for the first time, the joy of eating freshly picked, homegrown fruit and veg. It’s a joy that you just don’t get when you bite into something that’s been harvested unripe on the other side of the world, flown across oceans to be processed somewhere else, then eventually picked up from a supermarket chiller here in the UK – maybe weeks later. But, to grow your own food, the first thing you need are seeds. For millennia – for the vast majority of our agricultural history, in fact – farmers saved their own seed. Over time, plants adapted to the specifics of the area they were growing in, and local varieties emerged. But when seed companies developed F1 hybrids, which can’t be harvested and re-sown year after year, things changed. The genetics of these hybrids are too unstable – there’s no knowing how your crop will turn out. So farmers and growers reliant on F1 hybrids have to buy their seeds every single year. By saving and sharing open-pollinated seed, farmers and growers – and communities – are helping make sure our food supply can withstand the shocks of climate change. And, they’re also reclaiming collective control of the seeds we all depend on to feed ourselves – ensuring that we all have access to those seeds, even during a crisis – like a pandemic. Featuring: Astrid Guillabeau: Neville Portas: https://nodiggitygdns.wordpress.com/ Dee Woods: https://granvillecommunitykitchen.wordpress.com/ Helene Schulze: https://www.seedsovereignty.info/ Farmerama.co Producer: Alice Armstrong Executive Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose Community Collaborators: Andre Reid, Dhelia Snoussi Project Manager: Olivia Oldham Artwork: Hannah Grace www.hgraceoc.com/ Music: Michael O'Neil PR & Comms: Fran Bailey, Kate Lam, Elma Glasgow, Nancy Brownlow Who Feeds Us? is possible thanks to the Farming the Future COVID Response Fund. We’re very grateful to The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation for providing the funds to make this project happen.

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Who Feeds Us? #4: Whole Meal

When flour became scarce, many who mightn’t usually seek out a local bakery, let alone a local mill, started to do just that. In episode #4 we find out how this sudden upsurge in demand presented a huge challenge for bakers and millers – a challenge met with enthusiasm and ingenuity. Investigating connections between bread, mills, the farms that grow the grain, and the soil in which its grown, learn about the system behind most of the bread eaten in the UK, and the localised, smaller-scale alternatives, which found it could sustain itself during the pandemic.

Hear from Abigail Holsborough, the head miller at Brixton Windmill in South London and at the core of its local community as flour ran low. Meet Rosy Benson, who founded Bristol bakery, Bread and Roses, to provide nourishing loaves to those who needed them most. Then head to a small village in the Highlands of Scotland to hear from Rosie Gray, who set up her bakery, Reviving Foods, in a converted horse-box.

At the start of lockdown, as supermarket shelves were cleared of flour, people who might not otherwise have thought to seek out a local bakery – let alone a local mill – started to do just that. In this episode, we’ll hear about how this sudden upsurge in demand presented a huge challenge for these small-scale bakers and millers – but it was a challenge they met with enthusiasm and ingenuity, as well as a deep sense of responsibility to their communities. At one time, pretty much every town and village had its own flour mill, driven by wind or water. Today, across the whole of London, just one working windmill remains – Brixton Windmill. It’s a unique heritage site with a rich educational programme. But as lockdown began, the mill became much more than a historic curiosity – and its volunteers found themselves providing a vital service to the local community. Meanwhile, bakers across the country, from the city of Bristol to the highlands of Scotland, were baking nourishing loaves for the people who needed them most. These bakers and millers, many of whom have spent the last few years investigating the connections between the bread, the mills, the farms that produce the grain, and, crucially, the soil in which that grain grows, are engaged in building a better system – one that looks very different to the one that produces most of the bread we eat in the UK today. When inflexible, centralised supermarket supply chains buckled, join us to learn how they were able to carry on producing flour, baking bread and feeding people – thanks to the localised, adaptable, human-scale infrastructure they’re part of. How can we grow that infrastructure? How can we all become part of a more resilient, equitable, efficient and enjoyable bread system? How can we help local millers stock local takeaways with bread baked with their flour? How can we help people to understand that, if they care about good bread, they also have to care about healthy soil? And how can we make sure that we celebrate everyone involved in making our bread – and that we listen to what they have to say? Featuring: Abigail Holsborough: https://www.brixtonwindmill.org/ Rosy Benson: https://www.fieldbakery.com/ Rosie Gray: http://www.revivingfood.co.uk/ Farmerama.co Producer: Dave Pickering Executive Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose Community Collaborators: Cathy St Germans, Col Gordon Project Manager: Olivia Oldham Artwork: Hannah Grace www.hgraceoc.com/ Music: Michael O'Neil PR & Comms: Fran Bailey, Kate Lam, Elma Glasgow, Nancy Brownlow Who Feeds Us? is possible thanks to the Farming the Future COVID Response Fund. We’re very grateful to The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation for providing the funds to make this project happen.

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Who Feeds Us? #5: Cultivating Abundance

Episode #5 is set in the West Midlands, where it examines how the pandemic has highlighted connections between food, health, community and identity. Learning about the resources and needs of individuals and communities at this time, particularly those of African descent, we ask how access to land and growing space can feed us in different ways, through experiences of abundance and the ability to share in it.

We hear from Lynda Macfarlane, the founder of Vegan Vybes, a community group in Birmingham championing cruelty-free, creative ways of living and communicating. Farmerama collaborator and co-founder of Kiondo, Andre Reid, shares his story of setting up a WhatsApp group for his community to grow food and become more resilient. And academic, Dr Lisa Palmer, talks about her ‘Digging Around’ project, which researched the long history of African and Caribbean communities in Britain growing food and maintaining connections to their heritage through allotment gardening.

In this episode, we visit one region – the West Midlands – to explore how the pandemic has highlighted connections between the local and the global, the present and the past...and between food, health, community and identity. What can we learn from this time about the experiences, the resources and the needs of individuals and communities in the UK – and, in particular, communities of African descent? How can having access to land, to green space and growing space, “feed” us in multiple ways – physical, emotional and spiritual? Does being together in growing spaces allow the experience of abundance and the ability to share in that? Featuring: Lynda McFarlane: https://veganvybes.co.uk/ Dr Lisa Palmer: https://www.bcu.ac.uk/social-sciences/sociology/staff/lisa-palmer Andre Reid: https://kiondo.co.uk/ Farmerama.co Producer: DeMarkay Williams Executive Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose Community Collaborator: Andre Reid Project Manager: Olivia Oldham Artwork: Hannah Grace www.hgraceoc.com/ Music: Michael O'Neil PR & Comms: Fran Bailey, Kate Lam, Elma Glasgow, Nancy Brownlow Who Feeds Us? is possible thanks to the Farming the Future COVID Response Fund. We’re very grateful to The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation for providing the funds to make this project happen.

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Who Feeds Us? #6: Looking Back and Moving Forward

The final instalment of the series revisits the people introduced in previous episodes, and unravels the common threads that bind these seemingly disparate voices together, such as reverence, gratitude, sovereignty, dignity and abundance. We hear more about they’ve learnt so far this year and their visions for resilient, localised food economies growing into the future.

Food is clearly not just a question of calories; food is nourishment for the body and soul. Food is about community, culture and our relationship with each other and with the Earth. We are all part of the food system.  

The journey towards a truly resilient, humane and nourishing food system is complicated and will most likely be a bumpy one. The series closes with an invitation to embrace that complexity, to dive in, to seek out and connect with those who feed us, because food doesn’t come from shelves, food comes from the soil, the sea, and the hands of people. This is who feeds us.

In this final episode, we revisit some of the people we’ve heard from throughout the series. We tease out some common threads that bind these apparently disparate voices together – threads such as reverence, gratitude, sovereignty, dignity and abundance. We hear more about what these people have learnt over the course of this year, their visions for resilient, localised food economies... and how they see the future of who feeds us. It is clearer than ever: Food is not just a question of calories. Food is nourishment for the body and soul. Food is about community, culture and our relationship with each other and with the Earth. We are all part of the food system. The journey ahead – towards a truly resilient, humane and nourishing food system, a food system rooted in abundance – that journey is complicated, and it will most likely be bumpy. But this series is an invitation to embrace that complexity, to dive into it, to seek out and connect with those who feed us. After all – food doesn’t come from shelves. Food comes from the soil, the sea – and the hands of people. This is who feeds us. Featuring: Skye Gyngell: https://springrestaurant-shop.co.uk/ Jane Scotter: http://fernverrow.com/ Salma & Khalil Attan: https://www.bushwoodbees.co.uk/ // https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVrsm10F2zp_KO26MBCGRUw Ursula Myrie: https://www.adira.org.uk/ Angus Buchanan-Smith: https://www.the-free-company.com/ Dee Woods: https://granvillecommunitykitchen.wordpress.com/ Dr Lisa Palmer: https://www.bcu.ac.uk/social-sciences/sociology/staff/lisa-palmer Muhsen Hassanin: https://abrahamshalalmeat.com/ Abigail Holsborough: https://www.brixtonwindmill.org/ Rosy Benson: www.fieldbakery.com/ Lynda McFarlane: https://veganvybes.co.uk/ Farmerama.co Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose, Suzie McCarthy Additional interview: Lovejit Dhaliwal Series Executive Producers: Jo Barratt, Katie Revell, Abby Rose Community Collaborators: Cathy St Germans, Zain Dada, Andre Reid Project Manager: Olivia Oldham Artwork: Hannah Grace www.hgraceoc.com/ Music: Michael O'Neil PR & Comms: Fran Bailey, Kate Lam, Elma Glasgow, Nancy Brownlow Who Feeds Us? is possible thanks to the Farming the Future COVID Response Fund. We’re very grateful to The A Team Foundation, the Roddick Foundation, Thirty Percy and the Samworth Foundation for providing the funds to make this project happen.

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From Food Poverty to Community Resilience

During a 2018 trip to the UK, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that 14 million people (a fifth of the population) were living in poverty. It comes as no surprise, then, that nearly four million children do not have access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food. Many families in the UK are ‘food insecure’, meaning they face stark choices between buying food, paying rent or heating their home. To make things more difficult, many shops are either too far away or unable to sell fresh food. Fast food outlets are peppered near schools. Vegetables can cost three times more than ultra-processed alternatives. Food in this country has never been cheaper and yet so many households are struggling with food insecurity. How is this possible?

 There are many factors that create such a system. At the Food Ethics Council, we have learned that the language we use shapes our understanding of the world. It influences our everyday decisions, and ultimately culminate in the food systems, and society, that we have today. So what can we learn about the stories we tell ourselves about food?

 The dominant narrative in the UK food and farming sector today, and indeed across society at large, is that as individuals we are merely consumers at the end of a food chain. Daily messages tell us that being a consumer is our only source of power to influence our food system, and society. Our role is to choose between products and services, not to participate in the systems that provide us with our food. This same story tells us that the only way we can access food is by purchasing it.

This story is problematic on two counts:

 1.     The way we frame people: Ever seeking the best deal, the consumerist system is fast-paced, prioritises convenience over purpose and thinks short-term. Anyone who is unable to participate in this system of buying food, i.e. those living in poverty and unable to afford food, has no choice but to seek food charity, free food handouts. This forms an ‘us vs them’ dynamic between those providing charity and those needing it. This model leaves little room for dignity and empowerment, which has been linked to an increasing fear of being in need, disgust at such vulnerability, and anxiety of the impacts of such social need on society.[1]

 2.     The way we frame the problem: The current consumer narrative sees the problem being that many people cannot afford to eat. This inevitably leads to the question ‘How can we make food affordable for everyone?’ The response is the further cheapening of food, often to the detriment of those working in food who are often the first to experience poverty, paralleled with the dramatic rise of food banks in the UK.

 There is no place where the consumer story fails more than when people can’t afford good food, i.e. nutritious, sustainable and culturally appropriate food. We recognise that having enough money in your pocket is vitally important, but household food insecurity is more than an economic issue alone.

 We believe that there is another story that says we are not consumers alone, but more meaningful participants in food systems. It tells us that we have the power not just to choose, but to shape the choices on offer. We can, and indeed are starting to, work together, seeking not just what’s best for ourselves as individuals, but as communities and societies.

 We call this story food citizenship.

 Food citizenship is rooted in an increasingly shared belief that people want to and can shape the food system for the better, given the right conditions. It builds on three key ingredients: reframe, empower, and connect. When these are nurtured within a community, food citizens emerge. It also gives us a framework to shift our thinking on issues, including household food insecurity.

Food citizenship encourages us to reframe poverty as a question of disempowerment and isolation. When we think of ourselves as citizens, the problem we see emerge from current food systems is that many people can’t be citizens, participating in and shaping food systems. This expands the debate beyond economics alone, and sheds light on the multiple ways in which resilience – the ability for individuals and communities to sustain shocks – can be built and nurtured.

 Food citizenship also encourages us to reframe what citizens are capable of when they come together. Since July, the Food Ethics Council has been working with emergency food aid providers in Sheffield. We are identifying the evolving role of emergency food aid organisations as important social hubs, focusing on how to connect with one another to share local skills and assets, rather than hunger or poverty alone.

Reframing From...	..To
Consumers who can’t afford food	Citizens participating in and shaping their food environment
Poverty	Empowerment and connection
Charity	Social Justice
Top-down interventions	Community-driven initiatives with top-down resources and support

 Whether we are an emergency food aid organisation, a business, a government body, an NGO or an academic institution, we can ask ourselves:

-        How do we talk about poverty? How much do we focus on what is lacking versus what we are trying to build instead?

-        Where and when can we encourage more people coming together and connecting?

-        What local skills, knowledge and resources can we already tap into?

It is our power as a coordinated collective that will foster a transition towards more just and resilient food systems.
And this power is growing…

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Peasant Bread & Heritage Grains : A Photo Tour of Torth Y Tir

In 2016, we provided a grant to Torth Y Tir for a new pizza oven as part of the A Team Challenge. Needless to say, they’ve ‘risen’ a bit since then. Recently, a collaboration with Jason Taylor at The Source Image has seen their story beautifully encapsulated in film.

What is Peasant Bread?

Peasant bread is a loaf that is baked with the skill of a craftsman, the love of an artist, and the storytelling of a writer.  

In the past, peasant bread was made with what was available to the farmers who were considered poor. These farmers managed the whole process of growing wheat, milling flour, and baking bread.

Although the modernisation of the food system since developed, in France, baking bread in a similar vein continued and formed the tradition of ‘paysan boulanger’.

Today, the old values - where nutritious food comes directly from harmony with the Earth - makes peasant bread a true symbol of food sovereignty.

Peasant bread makes use of whole flour to produce a rustic and hearty loaf. There is a stiffness to the crust and the texture of the crumb is coarser compared to bread baked from refined flours. These unique and natural inconsistencies remind us that real bread is something authentic, sensual, baked with intention, and a gastronomic delight. The true beauty is in the taste – the notable full-bodied, almost nutty, flavour originates from the health of the soil.

“Whereas bread had become something that is problematic to our health we want to restore it to something that’s actually good for us and good for our communities.”

Image courtesy of Torth Y Tir

WhAT IS Heritage Grain?

The future of farming requires us to farm in accordance to the natural ecosystems. Heritage Grains are a useful tool in the toolbox for feeding the world whilst farming regeneratively.  

Heritage grains were bred, grown, harvested, and milled at a time when artificial inputs and machinery were mere imagination.

For a sustainable future, they already have a head start. They are regionally adapted to our climate. As Rupert says in the video, they out compete natural weeds, whilst the in-field diversity allows for a natural ecosystem where predator pest species can live. Also, through adapting to local regions, they even possess their own natural defences to some native insects.

But above all else, they taste really good.

If you’d like to read more on the future of wheat, this blog post by the Sustainable Food Trust is a good place to begin. So too this Wicked Leeks article ‘Grains to Change’. There is also an annual gathering of the UK Grain Lab, which brings together not just farmers and bakers, but also millers, breeders, scientists and academics, hosted by the Small Food Bakery in Nottingham.

From Field to Loaf

What makes Peasant Bread so important is the journey from field to loaf.

In the soil, live a universe of microorganisms that support the health of the plant, ecosystem, climate, and us! The health of the soil matters greatly to the health of the biosphere, for carbon sequestration, water cycling, and nutrition.

One of the best ways to grow healthy soil is through the diversity of plant species – different root systems use and cycle different nutrients at different times. Therefore, a diversity of available nutrients supports plant health without the need of inputs. Having a mixed population of wheat in the field really is more nutritious. An example of a good ‘field-to-loaf’ flour that is available to buy is the YQ wheat produced by Wakelyns.

Peasant Bakers generally farm their grains at small scale and therefore, require either a sympathetic miller or ownership of the equipment to mill the grain into flour. For Rupert, he owns a unique piece of milling machinery that is designed to produce beautiful flour sensitively (after all, this is an art).

 The allure of the loaf really materialises during the baking process. With ‘the artist’s loving hand’ the dough is fermented, risen into a leaven, mixed, folded and risen again ready to bake.

“This is a moment of alchemy; the final stages of the transformation from the field to your loaf, when raw ingredients become larger than the sum of their parts through the magic of a multitude of microorganisms as they unlock nutrition, develop flavour and cause the dough to rise.”

 Who is Torth Y Tir?

Who knew that locally grown wheat would survive in the very wet, west Wales? Well, according to historical records it has been as natural for as long as people ate bread.

Peasant Bread and heritage grains are farmed, milled, and baked in St Davids, Pembrokeshire by Torth Y Tir (Welsh, meaning Loaf of the Land) - a Community Benefit Society, owned and run by their members, who all hail from the local community.

Their aims are:

To practice and promote community-supported baking and heritage cereal production in a spirit of solidarity and openness.

To widen access to artisan, sourdough bread and the skills needed to produce it.

To demonstrate and teach the benefits of growing, processing, stone milling and baking heritage grains through the principles of agroecology and handmade, naturally leavened, wood-fired bread.

““Your loaf starts in our field. Nourished by the sun, the rain and the soil, our heritage grains are then freshly stone-milled on-site before being naturally leavened and baked entirely by hand in our wood-fired oven. It’s a process of dedication and a dance of time and intention”. Rupert Dunn ”

All photos copyright of Jason Taylor, The Source Image

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Growing agroecological farming businesses: supporting new entrants with the Mentoring Programme

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Written by Steph Wetherell from Landworkers Alliance. This blog post is part of the Farming the Future series. Their project; An Agroecologial Mentorship Network is a collaboration with the Ecological Land Cooperative and the CSA Network UK.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

New entrants to farming face a perfect storm of barriers. From inflated land prices to a lack of training opportunities, high capital costs to challenges accessing the market, building a strong and sustainable farming business is difficult. Yet we need a huge number of new farmers; in 2017, a third of all farm-holders were over the age of 65 and only 3% were under 35 years old. So how do we cultivate and support new entrants through this process?

The Landworkers’ Alliance is a union of farmers, foresters and landworkers with a mission to improve the livelihoods of our members and create a better food and land-use system for everyone. Alongside our policy and lobbying work, we work to provide practical support and assistance to our members – from training to network building.

One of the key issues that we have identified over the last few years was that the first five years of running a farming business is key. People may have experience growing or farming in another business, but running your own independent business can be really challenging. Suddenly, in addition to the practical skills you need, you are faced with the potential obstacles of marketing, sales, distribution and finance. In addition, things don’t always work out as planned and it may be necessary to change the way you work – explore new routes to market, find additional customers, or diversify or expand your production.

Alongside this we have a network of experienced practitioners who have learnt a huge amount along their farming journey and have a lot to share with new entrants. People who have made mistakes, found successes and ultimately built a strong and sustainable business. The question then became how to best match up the need with the opportunity.

Inspired by a scheme running in Canada, we undertook a feasibility study into running a mentoring programme for new entrant farmers. Looking at the Canadian scheme, along with the Making a Living From Local Food scheme run by Nourish in Scotland, and other mentoring programmes, we developed a plan for a similar UK wide programme. We teamed up with the CSA Network and the Ecological Land Cooperative to apply for funding from the Farming the Future programme, and then joined with the Organic Growers Alliance who had also been considering a mentoring programme, meaning we could run a larger two year pilot programme. Working as a collective to run the programme has brought a richness to the offering – both in terms of the experience of the steering group in designing of the programme, but also in terms of contacts and expertise in terms of the people we were able to recruit to act as mentors.

Learning from the Nourish programme, we incorporated group mentoring into our design. The ability to meet other local new entrants and learn from them as well as your mentor (plus the possibility of ongoing peer mentoring from within this group), felt like a perfect balance to the dedicated one-on-one hours. Everything was tied together with a group gathering where all the mentees and mentors would meet for a day of community building.

We launched the programme, selected the mentees, found experienced mentors and organised the group gathering… and then Covid-19 struck - everything was up in the air. Thankfully with a good chunk of work, and flexibility from the mentees and mentors, the scheme was adapted for the lockdown restrictions. The in-person group gathering became an online event, with mentors receiving three hours of training in the morning, and the mentees gathering to meet each other and learn about the other participants journeys in the afternoon. Unfortunately a few mentees were not able to take part in the scheme this year, needing to focus on the changes that the Covid-19 pandemic created, but 14 mentees have spent the last six months being mentored, and have a further three months left before the end of the scheme.

To fit around differing needs during lockdown and physical distancing, groups were given the choice of how and when they structured the mentoring. Some opted to dive into online mentoring, others waited until they were able to meet up face to face. There were also a few exceptions to the group mentoring setup, where mentee’s location or sector meant there was no appropriate group for them to be part of. In this case, they were offered an increased amount of one-on-one mentoring instead, allowing them access to the expertise that’s appropriate to them.

Feedback has been really positive from the participants this year:

“I was able to develop a great relationship with my Mentor which I would hope to maintain and nourish. His openness and willingness to share both his knowledge and intimate/crucial details of his own business operation is refreshing and invaluable.”

“The mentoring programme helped us to set 3 clear goals for this year: find, by the end of the season, where we are going to grow for the long term (we currently rent our site), reach a certain turnover target, determine what essential investments we need to do on our current site to make the growing season a success. Our mentors gave us the confidence to look for different sites options and we ended up putting an offer for the land we are currently renting (the offer has been accepted). We reached 75% of our target turnover with 6 months left in the year. We have a clearer vision about the priority investments to be made”

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AUTHOR: STEPH WETHERELL

Steph coordinates the national Farm Mentoring Programme and UK Farmstart Network for the Landworkers’ Alliance, a national union that is working to support small-scale agroecological farmers and landworkers.

Steph is also writer at The Locavore, a journal that enabled her to connect with local food around the city of Bristol. This work led her to coordinate Bristol Food Producers, a network of local growers, producers, retailers, distributors, restaurants and supporters who are working to increase the amount of local food produced in and around the city.

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READ MORE ABOUT FARMING THE FUTURE 2019

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Regenerative finance for Enlightened Agriculture - LEAP into Locavore

The world has changed since Reuben Chesters and Robert Fraser began working together. “It was a while ago”, says Robert, “so the situation has changed many times, as it always does... That’s life!”

About 2 years ago, Locavore: an organic vegetable box scheme and shop in Glasgow), had run out of space for their veg box scheme and were in need of a new base for the business to grow with demand. Having previously received bank loans for social investment, with high-interest rates (up to 10%) the fees risked outweighing the return for a small business. Without any assets, Loans for Enlightened Agriculture Programme (LEAP)’s unsecured, low-cost lending gave Locavore freedom to grow organically, with more support and less pressure.

LEAP’s blended financial package for agroecological food businesses, which includes a loan, grant and mentoring, is designed to help the sector “move away from grant-dependency”. This leg-up, rather than hand-out, comes from an organisation within the sector - the Real Farming Trust, who bring experience, understanding, and flexibility, to a commercial funding relationship that aims to elevate ‘enlightened’ enterprises to financial sustainability. When the building that Locavore was planning to purchase with funding from LEAP fell through, a new opportunity arose to take over the disused, council-owned plant nursery, Bellahouston. While this was a better site it would be a longer process, so the funding was instead funnelled into refurbishing Locavore’s existing shop and finding premises for a second one.

“It’s been brilliant”, says Reuben, “quite often, with organisations like us, opportunities come up and they end up being a dead end, so it’s great having the sort of partnership which is there to have the chat about this project and that project.”

Image Locavore

Reuben Chesters, Locavore

The shops will create space for more veg and more staff - Reuben was holding interviews for an assistant manager straight after our call - with around 10 new roles coming up. Growing retail will also drive activity on the land; already this year, a conventional farm has agreed to convert 15 acres for organic food that will supply Locavore.

The introduction of lockdown midway through the LEAP-Locavore project changed everything again, when demand for their veg boxes spiked by 27% [1], as 3 million people subscribed to a box scheme or bought from a local farm for the first time [2]. About to open the new shop, Reuben was forced to reconsider the best route forward. 

Image Locavore

Integral to LEAP is its adaptation to the inevitability of unexpected events, and a recalibration of priorities in the wake of change, as is often necessary with farming. “There are so many uncertainties”, says Robert, “you can’t plan next week, let alone next year!”.

LEAP tries to be, he describes, “as radical a solution to funding as we could come up with in the current circumstances… We haven’t come at it from a financial angle, our primary motivation is social impact and supporting the sector to grow and develop. Financial return is secondary,” although important for the fund itself to be commercially viable, so it too is sustainable.

A grant (18% of the loan amount) is also given to protect and strengthen the social and environmental care at the heart of their business models. Despite being valuable for existing and potential supporters, Robert laments that this care is rarely valued by commercial funders, and is “always the first thing that gets dropped by a business that’s trying to trade day-to-day, pay the bills, and survive.”

To help organisations understand and evidence their impact on the local community, environment and economy, LEAP collaborates with them on a ‘social impact plan’, which identifies what should be measured and how. “We recognise that collecting this information is an additional workload, so it has to be useful for their own management as an organisation, and every organisation is different”.

Image Locavore

Locavore used the grant for a new team member, a ‘social impact champion’, working to quantify and study its social and economic impacts. Reuben believes that the information will be useful not just to Locavore, but also for other similar businesses trying to “justify the straight-forward economic importance of localising supply chains”, as well as their community benefits.

“One of the problems we’ve had, and what the sector generally struggles with”, he thinks, “is communicating what we do, because it’s quite complicated... There’s lots of different aspects to it; it’s not just ‘zero-waste’ or ‘plastic-free’, it’s a whole different system that contributes in all sorts of ways to our society and economy. So on the one hand, we don’t have a simple message, and on the other, we don’t have any robust statistics either. We know it’s important, but we can’t tell you how important!”.

Locavore will now be able to tell us how important it is to the local community and economy, and, meanwhile, the Real Farming Trust and its network is working on a Social Impact Toolkit, being developed with Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience. The end result hopes to provide other community-based food and farming enterprises the means to more easily measure and communicate their impact.

Robert feels strongly that “without really growing peoples’ understanding of the importance of their food choices, it’s very difficult to have any change in the food system, because there’ll only be small growing projects and the market is always challenging for them”. 

READ MORE:

THE LAUNCH OF LEAP:
LOANS FOR ENLIGHTENED AGRICULTURE PROGRAMME

He understands that “a lot of organisations in this sector are inherently wary of debt finance, but that’s actually part of the problem we’re trying to solve” - a reliance on grants rather than profit, which would attract capital for reinvestment, and see steady growth. To make the food system more ecologically sustainable and socially equitable, it’s vital that regenerative food businesses become commercially viable and valuable.

“We’re on a journey, we’re all learning”, Robert says; “‘it’s not easy, and grants are absolutely vital in certain circumstances, they have a role to play. But they’re not getting any more common and are very competitive.” Meanwhile, due to Covid and recession, he anticipates that “funding will be even more important, though people may naturally feel more reticent to take it on”.

Whilst LEAP supports enterprises that “are all at different stages in their travels”, Locavore is one of the largest to date, having had their first million-pound quarter to June and set for a multi-million-pound annual turnover. “We’d like 10 of Locavore! It’s about developing the market for agro-ecologically grown food,” so Robert is very keen to hear from more businesses “selling agroecological, organic food, to their communities”.

To be considered as ‘Enlightened Agriculture’ and eligible for LEAP funds, enterprises will be in the business of growing and/or selling agroecologically-grown food. Their business model will be based on, and building towards food sovereignty and economic democracy: owned by the people and operating for the people, such as a co-operative, community interest company or community benefit society. By supporting community-centred enterprises LEAP aims to facilitate longer-term local economic and social benefits, so if this sounds like your business, get in touch with them!

To find out more about Locavore, head to their website, follow them on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

[1] https://orfc.org.uk/farms-to-feed-us/ 

[2] https://twitter.com/GlasgowLocavore/status/1302950610069852161/photo/1

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Defending UK Pesticide Standards From Trade Deals

Written by Josie Cohen from PAN UK. Their project - ‘Protecting UK pesticide standards from post-Brexit trade deals’ - is a collaboration with Sustain and Dr Emily Lydgate from Sussex University.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

As an EU Member State, the UK has enjoyed the strongest pesticide regime in the world in terms of protecting human health and the environment. The current UK system suffers from major deficiencies which PAN UK and many others are working hard to fix, but it remains a huge improvement on the protections offered elsewhere. As a result, post-Brexit trade deals pose a major threat to UK pesticide standards. Agricultural powerhouses such as the US are attempting to drive down our standards so that their companies are able to sell currently-banned, chemical-laden food to UK citizens.

What are the potential impacts of a drop in UK pesticide standards?

If UK trade negotiators bow to the demands of trade partners such as the US then the amount of pesticides in food consumed in the UK could soar. American grapes, for example, are allowed to contain 1,000 times the amount of the insecticide propargite than their UK equivalents. Propargite has been linked to cancer and classified as a ‘developmental or reproductive toxin’, meaning that it can negatively affect sexual function and fertility and can cause miscarriages. Pesticides not currently permitted to be present in our food could also soon be allowed to appear. Chlorpyrifos - which has been shown to negatively affect the cognitive development of foetuses and young children and was banned in the EU in 2019 – is just one of many examples.

As well as threatening human health, a drop in UK pesticide standards would also pose a major risk to the environment. Trade partners such as the US and India have a history of challenging the EU’s relatively precautionary approach to which pesticides are allowed for use, and the UK is already coming under similar pressure. Australia, the US and India all allow the use of pesticides which the UK prohibits because they are highly toxic to bees and pollinators, including neonicotinoids which are notorious for driving massive declines in bee populations. They also authorise pesticides known to contaminate groundwater and harm aquatic ecosystems, such as the herbicides atrazine and diuron.

These risks also pose an economic threat to the future of UK agriculture. If UK food starts to contain higher levels of more toxic pesticides then British farmers will struggle to meet EU standards, thereby losing their primary export destination which currently accounts for 60% of UK agricultural exports. Equally concerning, British farmers could be undercut by a flood of imported crops grown more cheaply on a larger scale and to lower standards. It’s crucial that the Government protects British farming by defending pesticide standards, particularly in trade negotiations with agricultural powerhouses such as the US and Australia.

What are governments saying?

The US, in particular, has made it very clear that weakening UK pesticide standards is one of their top priorities. They employ a wide range of tactics including attempts to persuade the UK to abandon the Precautionary Principle, which states that action should be taken to prevent harms to health or environment as long as there are reasonable grounds for concern. The Trump administration is also pushing for requirements for the UK to consult with the US Government and private sector (including the powerful US agrochemical industry) before introducing any new regulations or bans, including those designed to better protect health or environment.  This is a far cry from the UK Government’s narrative that we are ‘taking back control’ of our trade policy.

In stark contrast, the EU has been trying to get the UK to commit to maintaining existing protections and has been clear from the outset that it will not allow imports of agricultural produce from the UK unless they meet its pesticide standards. The EU and US are offering conflicting, almost opposite paths, which have the potential to lead to two very different futures for UK health, environment and agriculture. At some point, the UK Government is going to have to make a fundamental choice – does it want to maintain current levels of pesticide protections (inadequate as they are) or bow to the US Government in trade negotiations thereby ushering in a more toxic future?

So far the response from the UK Government to this fundamental question has been very confusing and not at all reassuring. After a huge amount of public pressure, they have promised to maintain food standards but have then fought against every opportunity to enshrine this commitment into law.  Given that there are almost no opportunities in the UK for public or parliamentary scrutiny of trade negotiations, they are asking for the UK public to simply believe them that they won’t trade away our hard-won pesticide standards behind closed doors.

What are we doing about it?

Thanks to the funding from Farming the Future, PAN UK, Sustain and Sussex University trade expert Dr Emily Lydgate teamed up to expose the dangers posed by post-Brexit trade deals to UK pesticide standards. The partnership combined PAN UK’s decades of experience working on pesticides with Sustain’s in-depth knowledge of agriculture and Emily’s Lydgate’s technical expertise and academic rigour as a specialist in international trade law.

Before our project began, despite the high likelihood of ending up with larger amounts of more toxic pesticides in UK food, farms and gardens, the issue was not getting the attention it so badly needed. It was crucial to get the message out to both decision-makers and the general public so that we could start generating the kind of public outrage we have seen towards US chlorinated-chicken. Ultimately, we wanted the UK Government to feel scrutinised on the issue of trade and pesticides so that they are less willing to agree to a weakening of standards during negotiations.

After many months of preparation, on 9th June 2020, we launched our report Toxic Trade. The report compared UK pesticides standards with those of the US, Australia and India and included analysis of each country’s negotiating objectives and approach to regulating pesticides. It caused an immediate splash and was featured in a wide range of media including The Telegraph, Financial Times, Independent, Mail on Sunday and various farming press. The authors did broadcast interviews for Radio 4, Sky News and Heart FM.  It struck a chord with the public and the short video that accompanied the report received more than a quarter of a million views and 5,000 people wrote to their MPs. Many of our NGO allies shared the report, as did online influencers such as James Resbanks and Julia Bradbury.

To accompany the report launch, we conducted YouGov polling which revealed that the UK public is overwhelmingly opposed to any lowering of UK pesticide standards to meet the demands of other countries’ trade negotiators. 71% of respondents are ‘concerned’ that a trade deal with the US in particular will increase the amount of pesticides in the food they consume, with 43% of people ‘very concerned’. The same figure (71%) agree that the UK Government must resist pressure in trade negotiations with the US to overturn bans on pesticides, even if this means the “best” trade deal cannot be reached. Meanwhile, 79% are concerned about impacts to health resulting from a lowering of UK pesticide standards with 77% worried about negative impacts on the environment.

All this noise got the UK Government to sit up and take notice. Defra issued a formal response on the day and has replied with more detail since. In addition to our ongoing engagement with Defra, PAN UK has been added to the Department for International Trade’s list of stakeholders in order to offer advice and a ministerial meeting is in the process of being arranged. Labour has also been extremely supportive and we have met with both the frontbench and a number of backbenchers on the issue. Our findings have already been mentioned numerous times in parliament during the debates over the Agriculture Bill.

 What happens next?

Toxic Trade showed that the UK public cares deeply about protecting pesticide standards and the report continues to generate more attention than we could have hoped. It has got journalists and the public to take notice and kicked off ongoing conversations with key decision-makers in both government and parliament.

This momentum is fantastic but there is still a long way to go. It is very early days for UK trade and we remain some way off from completing a deal with any country. As trade negotiations continue over the next few years (and likely beyond) it is absolutely crucial that we continue to keep up the pressure on the Government. To this end the partners plan to continue to work together to conduct research, media work and advocacy.

If we don’t make sure our voices continue to be heard in the highest echelons of Government then UK citizens and wildlife are likely to end up more exposed to hazardous pesticides and, ultimately, it will be our health and environment that pay the price.

Email your MP today to tell them to protect your health and the environment by taking action against #toxictrade

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AUTHOR: JOSIE COHEN

Josie joined PAN UK in June 2017 to head up the organisation’s UK campaigning, policy and communications work. She studied politics at university and has spent the last fifteen years working as a campaigner for a range of organisations including the League Against Cruel Sports and Save the Children. For the past decade she has focused on social, environmental and human rights issues associated with large-scale agriculture, leading ActionAid UK’s biofuels campaign and working on land rights for Global Witness. She is a trustee of Sustain and an advisor to the Climate Counsel.

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Read more about Farming the Future 2019

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A Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund for future-proof farming

10 Covid crisis responses, funded by Farming The Future, that rose to meet the many challenges of the moment with short-term solutions that lead to long-term regenerative resilience.

Coronavirus exposed many cracks in the food system on which we depend. The few supermarket chains relied upon to keep food flowing onto shelves were flooded with pressure and those cranking the strained supply chain named key workers. Nations prioritised their own food supply and global imports stalled, as the UK entered its ‘growing gap’ and the fragility of our food security entered the headlines. 

In the fields farmers grafted harder than ever, planting complex growing systems whilst responding to unprecedented demand for food and rapidly reorienting their routes to market. Meanwhile, farms felt the absence of seasonal workers due to international travel restrictions, as the national workforce was impeded by the pandemic.

With restaurants and markets closed by Covid, food needed to reach people in other places and new ways. The most vulnerable citizens, already more likely to suffer from food injustice, were left counting on the kindness of their communities, dependent on desperate food banks, or relying on the army to deliver emergency food parcels without the nutrition needed during a health crisis.

Farming The Future launched an emergency response fund for organisations on the frontline, to support short-term crisis solutions with long-term strategies for future crises, fortifying the UK’s food security and regenerative food movement. Applications were invited from groups previously funded by FTF partners - The A Team Foundation, The Roddick Foundation, Samworth Foundation or Thirty Percy Foundation - so they could be accepted in a flexible format and processed swiftly, recognising the urgency and pressure already weighing heavily on organisations.

We’re proud to share the 10 projects that received funding with you here. If you would like to know more about the work, please feel free to email Robert@ateamfoundation.org 

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A support network for new ways of working

Project lead: Community Supported Agriculture Network

Partners: FarmEd, Land Workers Alliance, Organic Growers Alliance, Soil Association 

Providing urgently needed business advice to the food and farming community was a priority, with several mentorship project applications being submitted. Farming the Future therefore brought together a handful of organisations and asked them for a coordinated response to the Covid crisis. A support network was formed between the Community Supported Agriculture Network (CSA); a cooperative membership scheme that promotes fair and transparent food production, FarmED; a regenerative farming and sustainable food education centre, the Land Workers Alliance (LWA); a union of farmers, foresters and land-based workers, the Organic Growers Alliance (OGA); a peer-to-peer support network of growers, and the Soil Association; collaborating with organisations and individuals across the food and education system to promote organic food and farming since 1946.

The project provides education and advice to growers and food businesses having to rethink their business structures due to the pandemic. Using their different strengths, expertise and audiences, the organisations designed a package of support to cover diverse issues using various formats, cross-promoting and signposting to one another, to make it as accessible as possible. In this way, a stronger support network was provided for the growing community at this time of need. 

Knowledge shared through the network included tools for setting up a CSA or box scheme, stories of positive, diverse Covid responses from growers and communities to inform and inspire, expert advice from Soil Association producer and supply chain teams, and an extension of their Food for Life Programme to support cooks in schools and care homes.

By coming together to help small-scale farmers and growers navigate the immediate crisis, the network is helping to keep quality food on forks, whilst building awareness and growing engagement in the regenerative food movement. By helping more people to adopt new methods and markets, the more resilient and thriving our local food system and environment will become in the long term.

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Keeping the community kitchen cooking

Project lead: The Larder (Lancashire and Region Dietary Education Resource)

The Larder is a small social enterprise with a big vision of ‘food fairness for all’, promoting healthy, sustainable food whilst tackling food poverty and food waste. A café and catering business in Preston that cooks with local, ethical ingredients, the venue hosts local activist and wellbeing groups and is home to a food academy for learners including ex-offenders, Syrian refugees and low-income families, and trains community ‘Food Champions’.

Photo from The Larder

Swiftly transforming the community kitchen into a Covid response unit, The Larder delivers 50-150 nutritious meals a day to vulnerable members of the community who are referred by local authorities and charities. Supported by rapidly recruited volunteers and founder of the Granville Community Kitchen, Dee Woods, The Larder quickly set up and began ‘Cooking for our Community’ on 23rd March: the day that lockdown began.

Continuing to support local producers through procurement and working more closely with local charities and authorities, The Larder’s relationships have been nurtured during the crisis. As well as meals, The Larder began offering online cookery courses for the community, including a ‘Kids in the Kitchen’ programme, delivered to 36 families along with the ingredients for 10 recipes at Easter, in partnership with a local housing association.

FTF funding is contributing to The Larder’s immediate community Covid response, which will include a cookery programme for 120 families over the summer holiday, and the continued provision of nutritious meals for those in need until the end of the year. A long-term recovery strategy aims to create community food independence and empowerment, including expansion of online resources and working with local government and Syrian Resettlement programme to support people who are even more vulnerable since the crisis hit, so that they will be food secure for the future.

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Who Feeds Us? Stories from a Crisis

Project lead: Farmerama

The award-winning agroecology amplifier - Farmerama, asks the question that the Covid crisis raised for many: ‘Who Feeds Us?’ A collection of stories about people who grow and process our food, how they were affected by Covid, their hard work and incredible capacity for innovation, will make up a podcast series that aims to solidify the relationships built between the food community during the pandemic, nourishing them for the future.

Promoting those who came together to feed their communities in new ways, Farmerama will provide a platform for the underrepresented and diverse voices on the ground and at home, building bonds whilst developing awareness of the wider movement. By explaining the current state of our food system alongside responses and solutions, the dream of food sovereignty will be brought to life by mapping the paths carved during the pandemic that could lead to a resilient, new food system to serve us for many years to come. 

In order to engage many more citizens in the subject of food sustainability, equality and economics, Farmerama’s plan encompasses niche networks, celebrity influencers, local and national PR, to promote the benefits of supporting local food producers, and the importance of a regenerative food system for everyone in society. We all need to eat, therefore we all need to know: ‘Who feeds us?’

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Getting products from pasture to people during a pandemic

Project lead: Pasture-Fed Livestock Association 

The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association (PFLA) certifies and promotes 100% pasture-fed meat and dairy in the UK; recognised and renowned for its highly nutritional quality, as well as environmental and animal welfare. PFLA members include certified farmers, butcheries and dairies who work with livestock that have been pasture-fed for their whole lives.

With the catering and restaurant industry closed for business, PFLA members had to find new routes to market. A shorter supply chain for people to buy directly from producers required a new level of operation and expertise that many small businesses lacked, including marketing, sales and delivery. 

To help the pasture-fed community navigate the new supply chain, PFLA received funding to produce a package of support, including guidance for direct sales from the farm through to e-commerce, packaging and logistics. As well as being available for questions and advice, PFLA is also building relationships with larger sales platforms, advocating for its members to be represented, and supporting retail businesses in the promotion of pasture-fed produce.

The funding also enables PFLA to develop regional groups, identified by members as the best solution to supply chain issues, bringing together local farmers, butchers and retailers. This initiative is a leading example of the collaborative, local networks needed to drive resilient, thriving economies and communities, growing out of the regenerative food movement and found across the globe in emergency responses to Covid that could create long-term advances for climate, community and food justice.

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Growing the community food connection during Covid

Project lead: Growing Communities

Growing Communities (GC) offers an equitable, community-led route to market for small-scale organic farmers through a local organic veg box membership scheme and farmers’ market in East London. With growing sites, training programmes, a network of like-minded retailers and a new model of wholesale supply, GC generate income for growers as well as enriching lives and caring for the planet.

At the onset of the Covid crisis, GC received a huge rise in demand from existing and new members for the healthy, immune-supporting, nutritious food it offers. Meanwhile, farmers were left with surplus, without food markets and restaurants to supply, and an urgent need for direct routes to market, such as the one provided by GC. 

Covid created a whirlwind of staff safety regulation, creating a need for extra space to pack and store food safely. A buddy scheme was born for customers unable to collect their veg boxes, and GC home deliveries. These extra costs flew in at the same time as income from the stall and other outlets disappeared, so, despite increased revenue from sales, the books didn’t balance and the business suffered a loss. 

GC found themselves to be considered an ‘essential service’ and their staff ‘key workers’, which validated the sustainable ethos of their business model whilst they continued supplying the community with fresh, nutritious food during the crisis. With funding to help recover the unexpected financial loss, GC’s purpose has been proven during this testing time, and can now continue to be cultivated by the growing trust and loyalty between farmers, suppliers and citizens.

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A local compass for regenerative farming in public procurement

Project lead: Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group

Partners: Boomcircle, National Farmers Union, Countryside Community Research Institute, Sustainable Food Trust

The Farmland Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), a Gloucestershire-based charity formed in the 1960s, was created by a group of forward-thinking farmers who recognised the health of the environment as a key for success in farming. FWAG provides trusted, independent advice to the farming community, on how and why to improve and benefit from the environmental value of their land within the current climate.

With food in the limelight during the Covid crisis, the long distance between people and places where food is grown has been shown up. County councils are starting to ask what they could do to safeguard the food security of their communities for the future; cue regenerative farming entering the conversation.

‘The Compass Project’, funded by FTF, includes a FWAG template for ‘Dynamic Procurement Systems’ that invites local authorities and regenerative food businesses into a circular model for regionalised economic recovery. This initiative encourages public institutions such as schools and hospitals to serve locally sourced, nutritious food, as well as investment into regenerative agriculture. 

The stimulus aims to increase short-term confidence of an economic recovery for food and farming industries, whilst hospitality and tourism get back on their feet. Longer-term, it stimulates the sustainable growth of a local economy, creating jobs, innovation and resilience, as well as producing human and environmental health benefits. This compass for public food procurement hopes to guide other regional authorities towards building a regenerative food industry, paving the way from Gloucestershire across the country. 

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Providing Manchester people with Manchester veg 

Project leads: The Kindling Trust

Partners: Veg Box People and Manchester Veg People

The Kindling Trust projects encourage the growth of local organic veg, which, working alongside Manchester Veg People (MVP) and Veg Box People (VBP) - co-ops of local growers, buyers and workers, is supplied to people, restaurants and caterers. This family of not-for-profit social enterprises champions a fairer, sustainable, Manchester-based food model that values the land and people growing food regeneratively.

FTF funding is aiding a long-term expansion of this veg box scheme, as an emergency response to the Covid crisis. Demand for VBP’s veg boxes exploded to include those struggling to access food, as collection points closed, and MVP’s orders disappeared with the orders from restaurants and institutions. Meanwhile, The Kindling Trust had to start planting at the same time as losing the volunteer base.

Responding to the needs and challenges of lockdown, operations were reorganised to provide home delivery, social support and Covid-proof volunteer opportunities. Continuing to supply veg box members and accept some new subscribers, the expansion will enable the enterprises to support and engage others who haven’t accessed their fresh organic local veg before, with more packing space, more people to pack and more time to publicise it. 

This crisis has only strengthened the working relationships, reach and value of The Kindling Trust, MVP and VBP’s work in the community. The growth in membership and operation of the box scheme, with ongoing promotion and awareness, will retain its worth well beyond the Covid crisis across the changed landscape.

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Levelling the growing field in a time of crisis

Project lead: Land Workers Alliance

Project partners: Community Supported Agriculture Network, Better Food Traders, Independent Food Aid Network, Open Food Network 

Land Workers Alliance (LWA) is a union of farmers, foresters and land-based workers that aims to improve livelihoods, food and land-use systems. Picking up on data collected during the Covid crisis showing a 113% increase in demand for veg boxes, LWA received funding to provide strategic support for veg box producers.

LWA worked with the CSA Network to identify 6-8 diverse food businesses embedded in their local communities, that can respond quickly to this and future food crises, but, despite growing demand, are reluctant to take out loans due to the recession. A mix of rural and urban farms with links to a community kitchen or food aid scheme will receive grants to help them reorientate, increase production and improve access to food.

Grants require the farms to incorporate agroecology and access to food for vulnerable people or key workers through the Independent Food Aid Network. Measures of the initiative’s success are being delivered to DEFRA - policy makers in England and Wales, whilst stories from the project are harvested for PR campaigns that encourage people to stick with local suppliers and veg boxes, and promote the benefits of regenerative farming. A short-term response to this crisis, this strategic collaboration supports community-focused solutions for the long-term transition into a sustainable and more equalised food system.

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Ensuring the seeds of food sovereignty continue to be sewn

Project lead: Gaia Foundation

The Gaia Foundation’s seed sovereignty programme works with organic seed growers and distributors to enable the transition to agroecological farming across the globe. Projects involve training new growers as well as raising awareness and creating understanding of seed sovereignty, and its role in creating regenerative, transformative change.

In the light of the Covid crisis on the precarious, unfair and unsustainable nature of our current food system, demand for organic seeds increased by up to 600%, as people tried to take food security into their own hands and land. The small businesses that produce and trade seeds found themselves overwhelmed by demand, struggling to fulfil supply whilst also cultivating next year’s crop with reduced capacity (due to self isolation / physical distancing).

FTF funding will provide the means for Gaia-supported producers to grow their operations efficiently, so they can package and distribute more seeds more easily, and ensure the cultivation of seeds for next year and many years to come. Sustainable growth will allow the seed sovereignty movement to keep up with the momentum being gained by regenerative farming following this crisis, for a more food secure future.

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Market Garden Cities creating Capital Growth

Project lead: Sustain

Sustain, ‘the alliance for better food and farming’, has supported thousands of London food gardens for over a decade, working with land-owners, growers, community enterprises, councils and local government. A survey of its network during the Covid crisis confirmed an increase in the demand for fresh fruit and vegetables, and, despite physical distancing, the importance of keeping gardens open to grow more of them.

Sustain turned to its ‘Capital Growth’ network, consisting of commercial peri-urban farms, small community gardens and individual plot-style spaces on estates, to create a pilot ‘Market Garden City’. Funded by FTF, communities of skilled growers, local volunteers and distribution networks are coming together around 50 gardens. Data from the project is being harvested for a scaling-up report of the initiative.

Aiming to increase the production and distribution of fresh food in the wake of Covid, Sustain will develop the blueprint longer-term by its ‘Sustainable Food Places’ programme, and ‘Good to Grow’ national networks. As this crisis demonstrates the urgency of urban growing for feeding city dwellers, and local authorities become more engaged in community enterprise, it’s the perfect time to implement projects that reveal and realise the potential for a localised, resilient, regenerative future food system.

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County Farms - 'Public Land for Public Good'

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Written by Graeme Willis from Campaign to Protect Rural England. This blog post is the fifth of the Farming the Future series. Their project; Public Land for Public Good is a collaboration with Shared Assets and New Economics Foundation.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

Momentous change is affecting many aspects of our lives with Covid-19, shaking up the pieces on the chessboard – few of us can really predict when and where they will all land.  Seismic shifts like this are turning us into futurologists, reflecting on how we can build back better after Covid and talking of the ‘new normal’. That cannot mean a return to the old and business as usual.

For those working on farming issues, these were already times of momentous change. Our imminent exit from the EU will alter our future trading relationships with potentially huge impacts on farming. A paradigm shift in policy is already afoot. Two major farming policy papers since 2018 have set out a new direction for agriculture with the legal framework to be set by the Agriculture Bill now finally progressing through Parliament [1].

From 2021, when the new Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMS) begins its pilot nationally, thousands of farmers will start to get paid for delivering a raft of public goods instead of being paid on the amount of land they farm. The radical market changes caused by the lockdown have amplified the fragility of farmer incomes and the inequity of a supply chain that almost never seems to work in their favour; and the realities of climate change are biting with volatile weather breaking new records (exceptional flooding in early 2020 followed by the driest spring on record); together they from a perfect storm for food producers.

These make it difficult to see farming slipping back to business as usual, whatever happens in the wider economy. Inevitable change means inevitable adaptation. So while nothing will continue ‘as usual’, the word ‘business’ is apposite. Farms are businesses and as such they must evolve and innovate if only to stand still. Happily or unhappily, the pandemic has emphasised this truth. But where does this leave farming?

The need to change more rapidly than ever brings into sharp focus the needs of farming as a whole to attract talented people with the skills, entrepreneurship and a passion for working the land. It needs to address too access to land and to the finance required for the transition. It also brings into question what the role of government should be in shaping and supporting the change necessary.

Some of the answers can be found in ‘The Future of Farming Review Report’, published in 2013 in a distant pre-Covid age and produced for government by a group of sector professionals [2]. It’s a wide ranging scan of the sector, primarily from the perspective of those who are in it (or who seek to enter it) and its conclusions are well worth revisiting. As David Fursdon, Review Group chair, sums up in his foreword:

“…the balance against new opportunity does seem to have swung too far in agriculture with high land prices, the CAP supporting the status quo, tenancies rarer and few other business opportunities. This is not healthy and the solution cannot depend on market forces alone.”

The report makes clear farming in 2013 needed to attract a pool of talented, resourceful, skilled and entrepreneurial people if it was to be a competitive productive sector, but also one that could deliver on the wider challenges of becoming sustainable and tackling the serious environmental challenges ahead, not least climate change.

The Review Group also concluded that the pressure from market forces and economies of scale have caused farms to grow and simplify their businesses at the expense of intermediate and smaller farms. It went on to recognise that for those who want to farm in their own right and start their own business: “This, in our view, is simply not going to be possible for all but a very few.”

With this stark assessment, they also expressed concern about the active sell off of county council farms as ‘a great loss for the sector’ with the group strongly supporting their retention, and made two key recommendations:

1. for an assessment to be carried out of the role of county farms in providing opportunities for new entrants and for guidance to be produced by government and;  

2. for the sector to ‘encourage Local Authorities to retain their farms and look for innovative ways to manage them’ [2].

Campaign for the Protection of Rural England

The loss of farm diversity in general remains an overlooked issue despite the widespread debates around the future of farming and farm support. CPRE analysis shows small to intermediate size farms continue to disappear  – farms under 100ha fell by a quarter down from 106,000 in 2005 to 81,000 in 2017 and the area they managed went down by a fifth, over 500,000 ha or nearly 1.4 million acres [3].  It should be clear we need to retain an ecosystem of differing farm sizes with a mix of ownership and tenancies, both public and private, to ensure wide and more equitable access to farming.

As for county council farms, ‘Good Practice Guidance’ was produced by TRIG in 2015 [3]. This confirmed that county farm estates have haemorrhaged land and farm holdings since 1966 with the loss of over 60,000 ha and 10,000 holdings by 2013. Research done by Guy Shrubsole (of Who Owns England), New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Shared Assets in 2019, as well as analysis by CPRE, confirms the colossal loss of council farm land over the past 40 or more years and continued falls since 2010 with nearly 9,000 ha or 22,000 acres fewer.

The loss of farm diversity in general remains an overlooked issue despite the widespread debates around the future of farming and farm support. CPRE analysis shows small to intermediate size farms continue to disappear  – farms under 100ha fell by a quarter down from 106,000 in 2005 to 81,000 in 2017 and the area they managed went down by a fifth, over 500,000 ha or nearly 1.4 million acres [3].  It should be clear we need to retain an ecosystem of differing farm sizes with a mix of ownership and tenancies, both public and private, to ensure wide and more equitable access to farming.

As for county council farms, ‘Good Practice Guidance’ was produced by TRIG in 2015 [3]. This confirmed that county farm estates have haemorrhaged land and farm holdings since 1966 with the loss of over 60,000 ha and 10,000 holdings by 2013. Research done by Guy Shrubsole (of Who Owns England), New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Shared Assets in 2019, as well as analysis by CPRE, confirms the colossal loss of council farm land over the past 40 or more years and continued falls since 2010 with nearly 9,000 ha or 22,000 acres fewer.

County farms that can offer a vital first step on the farming ladder are being sold off by local authorities struggling with ongoing austerity, they are seen as a ‘thing of the past ‘ and local authorities seem unable or unwilling to reimagine how their public land holdings could contribute to a host of pressing challenges for a new age. More ominously, despite the 2013 report findings and the 2015 guidance, the rate of loss has drastically accelerated - in the past three years it has quadrupled to over 2,000 ha a year (from 0.5% to 2.2% loss pa). [4]

So, seven years on since the Review report, little has improved to support entry to farming. True, we’re on the cusp of leaving the Common Agricultural Policy with a major shift in how central government will fund farming and land prices have already fallen from their peak, but the need for innovative, entrepreneurial new talent is greater, given the challenges of the climate and biodiversity emergencies. New blood is needed to reinvigorate an ageing sector. Yet, with the falling diversity of farm sizes and decline of county farms comes a loss of life chances for first-time farmers as well as others wanting to progress in the sector.

Stepping back a little, the county farms work done by Guy Shrubsole, Hannah Wheatley at NEF, and Kim Graham and Kate Swade at Shared Assets for CPRE in 2019, proved timely and fruitful. The opportunity came to bid for Farming the Future funding over the summer in 2019 and enabled CPRE, NEF and Shared Assets to collaborate further and plan for a second more ambitious project. This secured generous support as core funding from the A-Team and Roddick Foundations and a top-up grant from Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

This project, now underway under lockdown, aims to create a new wider vision for council farms and their potential to deliver a range of public benefits including exploring new models and approaches to how they might be managed and kept in public ownership. We plan to promote this vision to key decision makers and the sector, to build consensus and a stronger commitment to securing their future for the public good.

This boils down to three main strands of activity:

1. We are revisiting the evidence base and will, through interviews and case studies, show where beacon councils have the right strategies and plans in place and are already using their farmland to deliver a wide range of public benefits, such as locking up carbon in trees or increasing public access to nature and wildlife.    

2. Recognising that farm sell-offs are likely to continue, we are exploring different models from the UK and abroad of public or community ownership and land management. We will test these models with councils alongside their potential to work at scale. Then we plan to work collaboratively with practitioners in and outside councils to co-create a vision for the future of county farms.

3. We are pressing for the right policies nationally and locally to better support council farm estates and investment in them for new entrants and wider public purposes. We’re tabling amendments to the Agriculture Bill as it proceeds through Parliament with council farms already debated in the Commons at Committee stage and at 2nd Reading in the Lords.

In 2019 we called for national level, legal protection for council farms to prevent their rapid sell-off, alongside government investment to support their growth and development, as well as promotion of their wider value for the community by councils. In February, the government committed to making investments to create opportunities for new entrants. This is a significant step forward but the amount of financial support, when it will be available and for what purposes beyond new tenancies are still unclear.  So, we want to work closely with Defra, councils, tenants and prospective new entrants to help turn this broad commitment into a workable programme.

There is much to play for and at a crucial time for the project to be engaging with the issues. In some respects the trends remain unpromising with council farms disappearing at an accelerating rate, access to them in many areas a postcode lottery and prospects receding for those from a diversity of backgrounds and experience and those without capital, land or family backing to get into farming.

The calls for a green recovery are becoming louder and from every quarter from green NGOs to the CBI. As we emerge from the current phase of the pandemic and government invests in building back better, this is a critical moment for that investment to pivot towards delivering net zero carbon, an environmentally sustainable and socially just economic recovery, and fairer more equitable access to resources, opportunities, health and well-being.

With the backdrop of immense change, it is a pivotal moment to rethink what is possible and what can emerge from the undoubted damage that has been wrought whether from events or the absence of action and failures of policy to date. The decisions government nationally and locally make as they invest in future should be tested against the aims of meeting the climate and nature emergency. The way we use all of our public resources, especially public land held for public benefit – county farms – must be an integral part of that.

If you would like to learn more about the Campaign for Rural Protection’s work and how to get involved, head to https://www.cpre.org.uk/

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[1] Defra,  Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit, February 2018; Defra, Farming for the future Policy and progress update, February 2020

[2] Defra, Future Of Farming Review Report, July 2013; the review  group included representatives of the Country Land and Business Association, National Farmers Union and Tenant Farmers Association, the Bank of England and Central Association of Agricultural Valuers; Defra, 2013 above pp20-24

[3] Defra, Agriculture in the UK 2018, 2019 p7 Table 2.4 Numbers of holdings by size group and country at June 2017 (b) compared to 2005 June data ( see CPRE, Uncertain harvest – does the loss of farms matter, 2017 p8 table 2)

[4] The Tenancy Reform Industry Group (TRIG), Local Authority Rural Estate Asset Management Planning GOOD PRACTICE GUIDANCE, 2015, p4

[6] CPRE, Reviving county farms, December 2019; see p3 & subsequent analysis by CPRE of The Defra, 69th Annual Report to Parliament on Local Authority Smallholdings in England (1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019), 2020

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Author: Graeme Willis

Graeme joined CPRE in 2006 and launched new tranquillity and intrusion maps. He went on to manage research on local food webs across England. More recently he has written on the loss of smaller farms (Uncertain harvest, 2017) and on agroecological management of soils (Back to the land, 2018). His current interests are in promoting better use of county farms and changing land use to address the climate emergency.

Graeme was previously a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and tutor and research officer at Essex University where he gained an M.Env in Environment, Science and Society. He grew up in Cheshire where he regularly worked on family farms.

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Read More about Farming the Future 2019

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A New Cycle of Growth: Farming The Future 2020

Written by Tiger Lily Raphael

Farming The Future feeds the movement towards a healthier food system by supporting an ecosystem of change-makers, who work hard on the ground with a growing community. Together, we prove that it is possible to produce plenty of nutritious food for ourselves in ways that are fair, compassionate, and harmonious to our planet.

Illustration by Mahla Bess

The world woke up to an emergency that had been a-long-time-emerging when Covid-19 cast a light over the fragility of our food supply and shone through the cracks of a system held together by too few bolts, on which many lives depend. Lockdown forced us to look at our food security, as those with it found solace in cooking and cultivating any small plots or pots of land, and communities came together to support the already, newly and soon-to-be vulnerable.

Illustration by Mahla Bess

Our 2020 grant pool sets out to nurture the connective and collective health of a regenerative food movement, by facilitating and funding collaboration. Projects will strengthen links between all lengths of the supply chain; from farmers, distributors, and retailers, to community gardeners, campaigners and economists, to investors, philanthropists and politicians. Reinforcing relationships from the ground up nourishes the soil from which a new cycle of growth can begin. 

Illustration by Mahla Bess

The fund provides a platform from which the movement of organisations and individuals can be assessed; the areas and components needed for growth and symbiosis. Focus areas include policy and deregulation, food justice, education, land and economics - making up the landscape of the food ecosystem.

The 2020 collaborative process began with an online convening of the community, to assess the environment, and explore how we might be able to collaboratively create the components needed in the current landscape. The event began with introductions from Rob Reed of The A Team Foundation and Sam Roddick of The Roddick Foundation, followed by keynote speakers who inspired both hope and urgency: Professor and hill farmer - Tim Lang from the Centre of Food Policy, and scholar, environmental activist and author - Vandana Shiva.

Professor Lang described the convening as an opportunity to reach beyond the usual perimeters, commanding us to “be realistic, demand the impossible”. We’re seeing food banks, which were supposed to be an emergency response, buckling under growing demand as 8 million people could face food poverty in the UK. 50% of us own only £400, as inequality frays our social fabric, and, despite our overall wealth, we slip down the EIU Global Food Security and Sustainability Index.

Britain’s import tradition has caused issues of equality, sustainability and health for growers, eaters, animals, and the elements. Our food supply has shown itself to be vulnerable and a national strategy is needed; yet, whilst defence receives a budget of £39.5 billion, food and environment gets £1.9 billion. But we have an opportunity for change, as we create new policies, from a pandemic perspective, looking towards a post-carbon future. 

Vandana Shiva explained a measure of yield per acre that counts crop diversity, true cost accounting, and feeds twice the population of India. Yet globalised agri-business, which receives subsidies - from our money - to produce biofuel and animal food with resource-intensive methods. Exploitation and pollution by industrialised food production causes disease, social inequality and ecological destruction. The cost of cheap food is high. Yet when food is grown organically, by people on a small scale, more food can be produced in more sustainable ways. 

Lockdown shut down 1.1 billion peoples’ livelihoods; farmers became refugees as 1 billion joined the hungry. 150 million people could starve in the next 3 months. Yes, people are being more compassionate, but that won’t last unless the system is fixed. The crises are both consequences of and responses to war, and can be combated with non-violent agriculture, locally and globally, by all justice movements uniting. By redesigning the food system around people and our planet, rather than money, we can redefine economics and restore health. 

So, how can we help us help ourselves? The convening’s breakout sessions toyed with ideas and suggested ways to brainstorm. Like in any ecosystem, we depend on each other, and to find answers, we have to ask the questions..

Planting the seeds of knowledge and understanding…

Could we map the enormous and complex relationships, policies and projects, to find the paths and gaps between them?... What do ‘sustainable’, ‘regenerative’ and ‘resilient’ actually mean?... How do we learn about farming?... What is the supply chain and how are we a part of it?... How does the land lie? Who owns it?... How do financial decisions affect the food system and our lives, and how could they change them?... Why does only 7-8% of the £1.25 trillion spent on food in the UK reach farmers?... 

Diversifying soil with nutrients…

Who’s growing food and who’s receiving it?... Why are young, disabled and BAME people twice as likely to be hungry?... Could a crisis response fix the broken links in the supply chain, so millions aren’t left hungry whilst billions of tonnes of food is wasted?... How can we make healthy, nutritious and sustainably grown food, available and affordable?... Could finance, land and food policies diversify enough to support a diverse economy and ecology?...

Building relationships in and above the soil...

How do we balance food, finance and nature?... How do we work together on a common ground?... How do growers, land owners, local authorities, economists, scientists and NGOs collaborate on regenerative innovation, investment and best practice?... How do communities cultivate resilient local food systems with social, economic and environmental benefits?... How can we narrow the gaps between fields, markets, and people?... 

Time and space to grow... 

If we used more than 168,000 of 6 million hectares of farmable land, gardens and green spaces, to grow food, could we feed ourselves?... How do we make access to land fair?... Will the pandemic prevent opportunities for community gardening?... How can farmers get support through the transition period to sustainability?… How can financiers cultivate expectations from investors of longer-term benefits?... Will we invest in our future?...

Measuring rainfall...

Could financial incentives replace subsidies, and encourage responsible, long-term investment?... Can we find new measures of ‘growth’, and use them to develop our countries in healthier, more equitable ways?... How do we measure sustainability, resilience and the social, environmental and economic value of land and food?... Why isn’t soil health counted in the way that air and water is?... What labels would help us make healthier choices?...

Reaching towards the light...

How do we capture the lockdown spirit of citizenship, learning and community, and demand for space, seeds, and soil?... How do we bridge conversations about health, ecology, social justice and economics, to draw clear lines between food and inequality?... How do we reveal the many drops that make up the ocean, ignite emotions, spark imaginations, and celebrate food with everyone?... What part will food play in the story of the Climate and Ecological Crisis, and the race to zero carbon?... How do we create, rather than follow the same rules?...

We’re asking, how can we restore an ecosystem through growing food that is fairly, harmoniously, and compassionately, grown, accessed, and enjoyed. Because without food, there is no life, and food is what makes life worth living. Food and farming is the future.

Be part of the answer. If you think we could support each other’s work, please get in touch with Rob Reed - robert@ateamfoundation.org

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THE PROJECTS FROM year 1 of FARMING THE FUTURE

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‘Nutrition Per Acre’ – A New Measure of Farming Success

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Written by Adele Jones from The Sustainable Food Trust. This blog post is the fourth of the Farming the Future series. Their project; Harmonised Framework For Measuring And Valuing On-Farm Sustainability is a collaboration between Sustainable Food Trust and their wide network of collaborators.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

Towards the end of last year, whilst listening to an episode of the Regenerative Agriculture podcast, I was fascinated to learn about a prototype handheld spectrometer being developed by the Bionutrient Food Association in the US, which uses the ‘signature’ of reflected light from food samples to give a potential indication of their nutritional density.

The Bionutrient Food Association’s Spectrometer

Although this technology is still in its development phase, and a significant amount of data needs to be collected to calibrate the readings from each food type, it has the potential to enable any farmer or grower to measure the nutrient density of their crop (be it grass, grain, fruit, vegetables and potentially also meat and dairy products further down the line). On top of this, it could also allow consumers to make a quick assessment the quality of the food they’re purchasing.

But in nutrition terms, what makes one field of carrots different from the next? It’s an important question, particularly as we’re constantly being told that we all need to eat more veg - it’s now not just 5, but 10 portions a day. But which 10? And where should we be getting these from? This question extends far beyond vegetables and is something more and more people are starting to think about. 

For most farmers over the last 50 years, the key success indicator has been productivity, defined by ‘yield per acre’. Perhaps inevitably, this has encouraged farmers to strive for maximum yields using intensive production methods, but such systems often result in significant damage to the environment and public health.

In response to this, Vandana Shiva, the Indian campaigner and environmentalist, has been advocating for the widespread adoption of an alternative way of assessing agricultural productivity - “health per acre”, or “nutrition per acre”. In pursuit of this, Vandana and her team have been looking at the differences in the nutritional density of foods being produced by intensively managed monocultures vs mixed organic land across India. A report she published in 2011 states:

“Health per Acre” shows that a shift to biodiverse organic farming and ecological intensification increases output of nutrition while reducing input costs. When agriculture output is measured in terms of “Health per Acre” and “Nutrition per Acre” instead of “Yield per Acre”, biodiverse ecological systems have a much higher output. This should be the strategy for protecting the livelihoods of farmers as well the right to food and right to health of all our people” 

Vandana Shiva speaking in London on the challenges of the globalised food system and the need for an enlightened and compassioned agrarian renaissance.

Although much more research of this kind is needed, initial indications are encouraging - in terms of all the major food groups – macronutrients (the carbohydrates, proteins and fats), micronutrients (such as zinc, manganese, iron and copper) and phytonutrients (natural chemicals or compounds produced by plants which are believed to be beneficial to human health), the agroecological farming systems produced significantly higher levels. Similarly, research conducted by the Bionutrient Food Association found that the nutrient value of one leaf of spinach could vary by a factor of between 4 and 14, depending on a number of things, including the type of farming system.

The debate about whether or not food should be considered a ‘public good’ has been live over the last few years. The current consensus is that because food has a market value and is sold for profit, it should not be supported directly by the public purse. However, there is an argument that nutrition, and access to high quality nutrition should be. And if it could be shown that there really is such a degree of variance between the nutritional quality of products from different varieties and farming systems, at the very least this should be measured and communicated on food labels. 

The Sustainable Food Trust has been considering this idea in the context of our work of catalysing the emergence of an international framework for measuring and valuing on-farm sustainability. Over the last four years, we have convened a group of farmers and land managers to lead a process of selecting categories and metrics to measure the sustainability of their farms. In addition to the more obvious indicators such as soil, water and air quality, nutrient management and plant and livestock husbandry, we have also been discussing the farming sector’s contribution to public health.

 The UK currently has a significant opportunity to change the way farmers are rewarded by the government. Our view is that all policies should be targeted in a way that shifts the balance of financial advantage towards farming in a more sustainable way - producing healthy, nutritious food in harmony with the environment.

The SFT has been selected to run one of Defra’s ELM trials, during which we will be testing our proposals for introducing an annual sustainability assessment as a pre-requisite for farmers receiving public money, based on the metrics and indicators our aforementioned working group have pulled together.

One of the indicators we will be considering is ‘nutrition per acre’. This will involve working with the Bionutrient Food Association, Growing Food for Nutrition and the Real Food Campaign to help collect samples of both vegetables and the soil they are grown in, so they can be sent to a lab for nutrient density testing. Once this data set has been built up and calibrated, it’s possible that we could start using technology such as the handheld spectrometer to measure this. It might then be possible for governments to consider introducing incentives for farmers who are actively working to improve the nutrition of the food they are producing.  

Although we aren’t yet able to easily measure food nutritional density without lab testing, it’s exciting to know that we could be soon. As such, the Sustainable Food Trust is committed to working with other organisations all over the world to develop the concept of nutrition per acre as a new measure of farming success.

If you would like to learn more about the Sustainable Food Trust’s work in this area and keep up to date with our progress, please see our website ad sign up to our newsletter here – https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/

For more information about the Bionutrient Food Association, please see their website here - https://bionutrient.org/site/

For more information about the Real Food Campaign and how to get involved, see here - https://realfoodcampaign.org

Patrick Holden of The Sustainable Food Trust chairs a presentation on the harmonisation of on-farm sustainability assessment. Should the equivalent of financial accounting standards apply for sustainability assessment? Could the UK lead the world?

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Author: Adele Jones

Adele Jones is Head of External Relations at the Sustainable Food Trust. She has been with the SFT since 2013, primarily focusing on projects including true cost accounting in food and farming and the harmonisation of farm-level sustainability assessment. She is also currently seconded part time to the Welsh Government working on the ‘Farm Sustainability Review’.

Between September 2018 – 2019 she undertook a part-time secondment with The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs working on a project called the ‘Gold Standard Metric’, which aimed to harmonise government-led farm and supply chain sustainability metrics.

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Read More about Farming the FUture 2019

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Dee Woods Interview : Women’s Empowerment and Food Justice

In honour of International Women’s Day, Josina Calliste (co-founder of Land in Our Names - LION) interviewed Dee Woods to get her thoughts on women’s empowerment and food justice. Dee Woods is a food & farming actionist, Landworkers Alliance coordinating group member, and co-founder of Granville Community Kitchen in NW London. 

Dee Woods of Granville Community Kitchen, Kilburn

JC: Thanks for agreeing to have this chat today, Dee. Could you tell me a bit about yourself and your journey into food justice? 

DW: I'm a London girl, born in Ladbroke Grove. I've always been surrounded by food. That influenced a lot of what I do. I moved to the Caribbean when I was young and was immersed in this really diverse food culture. Celebration and connection and community comes with food. Whether we're grieving someone, celebrating their lives, or celebrating someone going on a journey, coming back from a journey… Food is central to everything. So what I do right now, I teach people to cook, in a way that sparks joy and that curiosity to experience flavour and texture and smell and taste. 

Alongside Leslie Barson, I run the Granville Community Kitchen. We co-founded this in 2014 because we could see increasing food inequalities through our own charity work. In our experiences of youth and community work, health promotion, from working really closely with people. 

Granville Community Kitchen was born through drawing on my experience as a food grower from a farming background and aspiring to be back on the farm (laughs), coming from a strong community. I’d experienced food insecurity because of disability benefit decisions and literally not having any money. Having to decide What do I do? Do I pay bills? Do I eat? Do I feed my children? And seeing that happen with other people, I thought there must be a better way to do this. 

JC: It’s great you brought up the celebratory nature of food in the Caribbean, alongside the harsh realities of austerity and disability benefit decisions and what it's done to people's lives, and the need for food justice in inner-city areas. What does a feminist food struggle look like to you? 

DW: In the 80s, I worked to create spaces for women of colour using womanist, black feminist perspectives. We created spaces where people could heal and get mental health support from other women of colour. 

For me, it's important to have that lens - feminism needs to be intersectional in food justice. One that focuses on our intersectionality of race, gender. 

And how food is used as a weapon. So when we talk about food apartheid, it is a militaristic strategy to deny people food. So that you weaken them. When the most affected people are women - especially women of colour. Which is how it fits into a wider white-dominant system. 

A feminist food struggle would have to be one that is queer/gender diverse, centres women, disabled people and people of colour at the centre of organising and co-creating the alternatives.

JC: Whose voices are missing in discussions around the right to food? 

DW: We’re missing the voices of the people most impacted by food insecurity - disabled, elderly and working-class people, women, people of colour, children. Also, people from the north who are greatly impacted by food inequalities, rural voices, including farmers and food producers. 

JC: Who are the women in your communities who inspire you in fighting an unjust food system? 

DW: The elder women inspire me. Because they've made it to their 80s/90s and they come with dignity and so much joy. Even if they might be suffering due to inequality. Firstly the late Beryl Gilroy, writer and teacher,(Paul Gilroy's mother) who was one of the founders of Camden Black Sisters which I was part of from the mid-80s to early 90s. In Trinidad, the late Mrs Nesta Patrick nurtured and guided my feminism as a young woman, giving me my foundation in understanding activism, patriarchy and women's rights.

Two ancestors - my paternal grandmother Elsie Woods nurtured my fascination with food and plants. For a child coming from Ladbroke Grove, she was this wondrous Iyami Aje [1]. My lasting memory of her is walking everywhere with her and foraging herbs and wild plants.  My maternal grandmother Ena Evans and her "sweet hands”[2] sparked my love of cooking (design and fashion) from a very early age.

So I stand on the shoulders of so many great women! I have been truly gifted on my path. And I would say young people inspire me as well. 

JC: Any young women you’re happy to name? 

DW: Where do we start? You! (laughs) 

JC: I haven't done anything!

DW: No really, your passion and deep earth connection along with political astuteness and actionism are truly inspiring. Also Farzana (Khan), Zahra (Dalilah), Guppi (Kaur Bola), Noni (Makuyana)… the list goes on. This generation just gets it. their honesty and authenticity, the profound understanding of interconnectedness, the genuine drive for justice plus the sheer energy and joy… women who understand the systems. From the economy to race, to gender. Women who just know how to unpack these issues, verbalise and explain them to others. 

Dee Woods (left) and Josina Calliste (right)

JC: Wow. Thank you - that is *high praise* for this bunch of young women!

JC: Moving on - we know that 55.9% of food bank users are women, and a disproportionate number of those are Black & Asian women. Can you tell me a bit more about this? 

DW: Here in the UK, particularly in urban settings, we see the inequality in women's lives. Particularly for women of colour. Poverty, disability, food insecurity, health inequalities, poor housing all play a role. It is a struggle to see and hear about people’s lives, as someone with those lived experiences and also on the frontlines of a worsening food insecurity crisis.  It makes me angry that in the 6th richest economy that this is allowed to happen.

Current research is beginning to show who is most impacted, but there is no real analysis as to why. We need an intersectional lens that centres race, gender, class, sexuality and ability. Top-down and policy responses take time. So we have a collective responsibility to create grassroots solutions whilst lobbying for the systemic change. The voices of those most affected must be centred in both policy and grassroots solutions. 

JC: How does Granville Community Kitchen try to empower women, address food poverty & address the things that contribute towards foodbank use? 

DW: I think what we do is encourage women to step into their power by supporting them. Because I often say that Granville Community Kitchen is a centre for resistance, resilience and repair. So by supporting women like that - some people have gone on to work, some people have gone on to study, be it a short course or something. Other women just volunteer because that's all they can do. But they know they are part of something and they're contributing and making something.  And I think our particular model of community working is because we're community-owned. We're not a charity, we're not a social enterprise, come in to solve a problem - no. This is a community sitting down together and working out what we can do to support each other. 

Women are leaders within this. But we need to be in the places where decisions are made, and we need to be upskilling to get ourselves there. When I say upskilling - we need to be learning policy-speak and learning how to write it. Being able to read, draw out facts, learn research skills, and share our stories, our personal experiences. We hold the power to change narratives. So, poverty isn't a crime, it's nothing to be ashamed of, because we're not poor because of our choices, we're poor because there's a system stacked up against us.

JC: Yes that’s not intuitively feminist to me. It’s not how I’ve seen women work together - or what I imagine my Grenadian Grandmother did, or the grandmothers you talked about in this interview… 

DW: Caribbean society is heavily matriarchal. Women did things - market, su-su, they were the ones organising and running things. Still burning a pot, still baking bread, still out in the fields. Women were the ones thinking, organising, writing. Being in the kitchen - that is powerful. Understanding food, being able to cook - that's transformative. Knowing how to grow food - that is knowledge. If you don't know that and you don't know how to pass that on - you know nothing.  

 JC: Final question - how do we build solidarity and movements for our collective liberation? 

DW: We need more people from our communities stepping up. That is happening within faith groups around food banks. But we need more of a food justice, food sovereignty dynamic. This would mean setting up projects which support people into work, to build skills and address their issues. We need to truly listen and to have the courage to do the often painful work in our communities. To not only tear down the edifices of oppression, but do the healing work and build alternatives that are just and equitable. To find common ground is to honour our human dignity and to centre everything in love.

*.1 Iyami Aje (Yoruba): Obeah woman or witch

*.2 Sweet hands: a term from Trinidad & Tobago for someone who can transform the simplest of ingredients into something that is divinely gastronomic, evoking pleasure and memories of good food. See here: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2015/10/17/the-scene/tastes-like-home/sweet-hands

*.3  su-su (original Yoruba - esesu)  - informal rotating savings networks popular among women in African diaspora communities. Other names include: tanda, pardner, box hand, stokvel, hagbad, ayuuto.

Header Image Credit : Miles Willis Photography

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Author: Josina Calliste,
LAND IN OUR NAMES (LION)

Josina is a health professional, landworker, activist and community organiser. She co-founded Land in Our Names (LION) in June 2019 in order to uproot & disrupt systemic issues of land as they pertain to people of colour in Britain. She loves farming and nature walks. One day she will found an eco-village with anti-racism and women's empowerment at its heart.

You can contact Josina via:

Insta: @LandInOurNames / @Josinaz13.8
Twitter: @Jo_ZinaC

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Fitting Sustainable Farming Into a Policy Straightjacket

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Written by Vicki Hird, from Sustain, this is the third blog of the Farming the Future series. Their project; Making Voices Heard is a collaboration between Sustain, The Landworkers Alliance, Pesticide Action Network UK, Sustainable Soils Alliance, and Farming Working Party of the Sustain Alliance.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

We’ve had a wild two years and it is not calming down. That’s a strange sentence to write as policy work should be calm and logical and evidence-based and so on. But if you combine the challenges of working under an endless Brexit political storm, with reshuffles, a new set of laws and evolving policies, alongside the urgent challenges of a climate and nature emergency and a food system that remains largely wedded to the cheap and nasty – you get wild.

 Our project funded by the Farming the Future programme was called Making Voices Heard and was aimed at ‘Ensuring that ‘Farming the Future’ concerns are embedded in imminent policy, legislation and future farm funding’. It started in the midst of the chaos last year and was an essential resource so we could support those championing better farm policies. We did help make voices heard in the corridors of power and continue to do so. A few thoughts on what’s been achieved so far:

Setting farm policy in the right direction

The Agriculture Bill - the legislation on farm payments and standards to replace the European Common Agriculture Policy - will be the first UK Agriculture Act since 1947. As such it is central to our story. 

When the first iteration of this Bill was published in late 2018 after months of feverish consultation, it was hailed as potential game changer; laying out a new financial support system based on the public paying for specific public goods, like nature and access, plus support for productivity, marketing and even a nod to making supply chains fairer. There were many serious concerns about how the Bill will deliver - particularly as it’s largely powers without accountability, and the lack of a decent budget. 

But it was innovative and held potential in delivering land based carbon savings and other key environment targets. We worked with partners including Landworkers Alliance, Soil Association, CPRE and many others to lobby for changes needed including getting agro-ecology recognised as a key target for support, as well as on public health, soil, ensuring supply chain fairness, worker conditions, strong budgets and many other amendments. We were part of a huge and unprecedented alliance of stakeholders demanding new legal protection from unsustainably produced agri-food imports. It was a fevered time of lobbying where I wished I had a flat next door to Westminster. I lost track of how many oral evidence MPs sessions I’d done and became a serious Ag Bill geek. 

But then it all faded as the Bill stalled and finally fell for a second time at the December Election. The loss of momentum was damaging and also scary for anyone working on the land.

Like a phoenix, a new Bill has been presented and we start again. But this time we were thrilled to see several of our’s and other’s amendments inserted – such as:

•                  inclusion of financial support for soil health, and a mention for agro-ecology, Yay!

•                  significant changes to the Fair Dealing clause to ensure all the supply chain can be covered under the new statutory codes and a few other useful clarifications. A real win.

•                  new requirement on the Secretary of State to deliver multi-annual funding plans and report on progress.

•                  a new requirement to undertake a regular Food security review (though this needs work).

We remain, with all other stakeholders, very concerned at the lack of legal tools to stop the threat of new trade deals undermining our standards and ability to enhance farming and food standards. And it is concerning how much of the Bill still gives the Secretary of State powers not duties so they could, in theory do little. We have given yet more MP evidence sessions and briefings and we are asking them again to table amendments as the Bills moves (faster) through parliament.

Meanwhile, a new farm support scheme is being created

The Environmental Land Management System (ELMS) is the UK’s replacement for the EU farm payment system. It has had 3 years in gestation and is still far from finalised. I have been on stakeholder groups and helped others to inform the design of this vital new scheme – day long ‘deep dives’  into payments methodologies for instance; what should be paid for and how the guidance will work. ELMS has had a hard gestation but given the complexities of creating a whole new scheme to replace the CAP, plus 3 Secretaries of State and numerous Ministerial shifts, it is not surprising.

 We are working to ensure whole farm agro-environmental approaches are not disadvantaged in the new scheme. A new ELMS discussion document was finally, after much delay, launched in February and outlines (some of the detail) of the proposed Scheme for England. The paper is also a discussion document aimed at getting the farm and wider stakeholder community to respond to the current design. There are also several years of tests and trials of the design ideas. We are pleased to work with Landworkers Alliance on a successful bid to undertake one on horticulture farms, agro-ecological issues, and community engagement. 

 At the same time, Defra published a wider farm policy paper which touched on wider policy objectives and proposals including an animal health and welfare pathway, support for productivity, and the new National food Strategy.

National Food Strategy work 

This cross-departmental initiative (commissioned by Michael Gove when at Defra) will be covering the ‘entire food chain from farm to fork’. So we are lobbying hard on agro-ecology and new routes to market alongside other key areas.  Henry Dimbleby, heading this up, has managed to keep the NFS alive through all of the political upheavals and has secured cross-party and cross-sector support. After public engagement this year, the review will publish a final report in winter 2020 with recommendations that will shape a National Food Strategy (as a White Paper) which should ‘be delivered within 6 months’. 

How well this Strategy will get to grips with (and how much the Government will take forward and resource!) the need for a radical reform in farming plus the supply chains and dietary shifts needed to embrace an agri-ecology, fair approach remains to be seen. We have provided evidence and are working with the NFS staff and supporting members in engaging with this initiative. If the NFS acknowledges the truth in the evidence showing the harm of a business as usual approach – then it should shake the whole system up. 

Trade with the EU and the rest of the world is more than chlorine chicken

As previously noted, we’re looking to get amendments into the Agriculture Bill to stop agri-food imports undermining our standards and farmers. Government spokespeople repeat the mantra that food standards will not be undermined but then fail to put in legal constraints and parliamentary oversight to deliver on that assurance. Consumers have repeatedly said they do not want hormone- injected, chlorine-rinsed, antibiotic-intensive food. These processes often mask terrible animal welfare conditions. The UK should be leading the way in high quality, high welfare food, not bending over backwards to please the United States or other countries.

To conclude, if such a thing is possible in these turbulent times, as we have decided to definitely leave the EU and all that entails, some clarity (however unpalatable) is emerging. Some green shoots of hope are sprouting as we work with other stakeholders to help form the new, revolutionary farm schemes and better regulation of supply chains. Yet glowering over our efforts, we have the ever present threat of trade deals designed by the big ag and big food industry and not for our benefit. We also need to make sure  land based climate policies do more good than harm!

Pushing a farm and food  revolution supported by supply chain and consumer/citizen action that’s good for farmers, workers, the environment, animal welfare and our health, remains, as ever, vital. However wild it gets.  

 Follow Vicki on twitter (@vickihird and @UKSustain) and sign up for Sustain farm updates here.

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Vicki Hird, Sustain

Vicki Hird is an award winning author, expert, strategist and senior manager who has been working on environment, food and farming issues for over 25 years. As part- time Sustainable Farm Campaign Coordinator at Sustain, Vicki manages the farm policy and related campaigning and provides comment and guidance on these issues.

She has launched many major food and environment campaigns, from local to global in scope, has blogged frequently and published numerous reports and articles on the sustainability of food systems and published Perfectly Safe to Eat? (Women’s Press 2000).

She has an academic background in pest management and is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and the RSA. Vicki is on the board of Pesticides Action Network, and the Keo Foundation, was chair of the Eating Better Alliance and has sat on numerous government advisory groups over the years. She also runs an independent consultancy undertaking campaigning and research.

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Building a Civil Society Collaboration to Reduce Pesticide Related Harms

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This is the second of the Farming the Future blog series, written by Stephanie Morren, from RSPB. Their project; Building a civil society collaboration to reduce pesticide related harms is a collaboration between RSPB, Pesticide Action Network, Soil Association, and Friends of the Earth.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

Building a civil society collaboration to reduce pesticide related harms

Pesticides are used extensively across the world, including the UK, on farmland, in gardens and in public spaces. However, evidence is mounting for the devastating impact the routine use of pesticides has had, and is continuing to have, on the environment and human health. Public concern about pesticides is growing, with a recent UK survey showing 78% of people believe the government should be doing more to support farmers to reduce pesticide use.

Impact on the environment 

(Farming The Future: bumblebee image credit: Grahame Madge, RSPB images)

 Pesticides are designed to kill unwanted organisms. However, they can also impact non-target species. Pesticides easily spread to the air, ground or waterways impacting a wide variety of wildlife, including birds, mammals and invertebrates. Recent evidence suggests that abundance of insects worldwide may have fallen by 50% or more since 1970 and 41% of insect species are faced with extinction. This is extremely worrying, not least because insects are vitally important as food for other wildlife, as pollinators and as recyclers. It is difficult to determine one single factor contributing to their decline, but scientists believe that intensive agriculture, including the use of pesticides, is a major factor in farmland biodiversity loss. 

Impact on human health

Pesticide applications to crops result in varying levels of residues remaining in, or on, our food. Food items may contain the residues of just one pesticide, while in others the residues of multiple pesticides will be detectable. Farmers and farm workers can be exposed to pesticides, as well as rural residents due to pesticide drift, and in our towns and cities we are exposed to pesticides through the spraying of amenities, such as our parks, pavements and playgrounds. Health impacts can be acute immediately after inhalation, ingestion or skin contact, or can be prolonged which has been linked to many different diseases.

What can we do?

Many people believe that a fundamental change in the farming system towards an agroecological approach – working with nature not against it – is required to secure a drastic reduction in pesticide-related harms. Evidence shows that using an Integrated Pest Management approach on farms – where pesticides are used minimally and only as a last resort – can have whole farm benefits and does not lead to the loss in profit or yield that many fear. 

Farmers are doing their best to produce food and keep their businesses afloat. However, the current system of advice, support, financial backing and training is not set up to empower and enable farmers to take the steps required. Changes in policy to enable this must come from decision-makers in Government.

Farming the Future and the Theory of Change workshop

The Farming the Future Fund has enabled us (RSPB, Pesticide Action Network UK, Friends of the Earth and the Soil Association) to start to develop a civil society collaboration around this issue. Over the next few years there are a number of opportunities to influence decision-makers to increase regulation, in parallel with providing support and incentives, that will lead to a reduction in pesticide use. We felt the time was now to set up this collaboration, gather support and make real change happen.

 In December, we ran a workshop to develop a theory of change to determine what we need to do to achieve a reduction in pesticide-related harms in the UK. Attendees came from a wide variety of sectors and backgrounds, including NGOs, farmers, campaigning organisations, scientists, trade unions and consumer groups. Importantly, we brought together people representing the environment sector AND the health sector so we can speak with one coherent voice. The buzz in the room was great and it was heartening to see so much enthusiasm for the start of this exciting collaboration. 

The workshop started with a ten-year visioning process – in other words: what did people want the world to look like in 2030. Then the attendees split into four groups to understand and prioritise the threats facing us as we try to solve these issues – each focussing on one overarching theme (policy, research, narratives and land management). The groups then developed goals, designed to address the threats and these were presented back to all attendees. The final session saw all participants given the opportunity to brainstorm actions for how to achieve the newly created ‘goals’; to provide a starting point for a future action plan. 

The following points sum up some of the overarching ideas that came out of the workshop for what we want the world to look like:

• The need for cross-sector joined-up thinking linking agriculture to health, lifestyle, food and environment and civil society organisations. 

• More sustainable farming systems with a wider adoption of agroecology including Integrated Pest Management and with pesticide reduction targets.

• Broader research and evidence on sustainable crop production.

• Improvements in policies and regulations to increase their resilience, quality and transparency.

• Farmers with more support and prosperous farms, enabling them to champion reduced pesticide use. 

• The need for public access to safe and affordable food, as well as better information to allow them to make informed consumer decisions in transparent supply chains.  

Next steps

The next steps are to finesse the Theory of Change to make it into a product that everyone in the collaboration can get behind. Along with this, will come the development of a plan that will enable the collaboration to strategically prioritise activities during this next year or two of great opportunity. We will also develop a communications plan to enable us to reach a wider audience and have more of an impact with decision makers.

There are many more people we would like to reach out to and really build this momentum, and plan to do this over the next few weeks and months. We have been overwhelmed by the passion and enthusiasm of all those we were able to get in touch with as part of this project and it gives us real hope that change can be achieved. Thank you to the Farming the Future partners for helping us make a start and get this off the ground!

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England's Fields : Farming the Future

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This is the first of the Farming the Future blog series, written by Jenny Phelps, MBE, from Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG). Their project; England’s FIELDS (Farming and Integrated Environmental Local Delivery Support) is a collaboration between FWAG, Pasture for Life Association, Sustain, and the Real Farming Trust.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

One of the best things about working in farming and conservation is that you are often surrounded by genuinely lovely people.  Often these people are driven, like me, with a purpose and ambition to make a small difference in the world. I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the Farming for the Future workshop to share ‘bread’ and conversation with some such inspirational people. The FTF hosts seemed unique in their vision, with the idea of bringing people together, good people, who cared about the future of farming and the countryside to see how the support from the Farming the Future initiative could make a difference.  ‘Tell us what you need to make your vision happen’, said Sam Roddick of the Roddick Foundation.

We were inspired and lucky enough to share the time that day with Vandana Shiva, Patrick Holden, Colin Tudge, Ruth West, Vicki Hird, Kath Dalmeny and many more.  The FTF team invited other charitable foundations to come together to see if their combined support might make some of our aspirations for a more sustainable, resilient world happen faster.  At a time when there seemed little hope that politicians might find some sensible direction, it was a lifeline for those of us who have a clear vision of a different world.  A vision where all people are valued, where food communities come together, where farmers are supported to farm the land regeneratively in a way that feeds the people, protects the environment and protect our vital resources of soil, water, and wildlife.  A vision of a future where everyone can eat healthy food and be free from hunger and uncertainty, and how we might all start to heal the planet and in doing so, help ourselves. 

Our collaboration were lucky enough to be successful in winning support. I am hugely grateful to be able to show how our integrated local delivery framework might help build resilient and prepared communities.   It seems very uninspiring to talk about a ‘framework’ for local action, to quote Sam Roddick ‘it’s not very sexy, but vital!’.  In reality, it is a wonderful, dynamic, inclusive process, that is unique in every location but has a structure to inspire and enable people to take action in a complex world.

The process creates the opportunity for all communities (with support from an environmental adviser) to take local action for climate change by being inspired to reconnect to agroecological farming and enabling the benefits of re- localisation.

It is also a process that is desperately needed.  A ‘systems’ approach that can enable everyone to feel that they are valued and can take meaningful action, which also potentially helps with any eco-anxiety.  Understanding how to act locally, but in a global context, will enable us all to play a meaningful part. A process that is internationally transferable to every community around the world, so we can all be part of a collaborative and inclusive approach creating a network of regenerative farming and ecological recovery, by looking after the piece of the world we care about. 

We are faced with a huge challenge to combat climate change, but humanity seems fixed on creating endless strategies and models as to how the world might be saved at a policy level.  Often there is little or no regard for the actual real world, the indigenous people and their knowledge, sense of place and essential contribution to transforming, (with support) their local environment.  What we need is a combination of the two, where local communities and farmers are valued for their knowledge but can understand how to be supported by multiple international opportunities at a local level.  A mechanism as to how partners can co-deliver their objectives together in genuine, meaningful partnerships with local people.  None of this happens without someone to bring it all together, to inspire and enable local action in a strategic context.

The support from Farming the Future will help to fast track awareness of the opportunity to roll out the integrated local delivery framework. To do this, we need to make the case for specially trained advisers to enable communities to understand how to unpick the complexity of governance of their local area.  How they can integrate support from multiple partners and stakeholders and enable people to work together to look after their locality. 

The funding enables us to carry out an analysis to demonstrate to the treasury (and all government departments) the cost-benefit of integrated local delivery.  It will enable us to promote a transition to regenerative agriculture from existing case studies and align with Neighbourhood Planning for resilience and preparedness planning.  It will help us promote pasture-fed livestock in sustainable land management, and the vital role grass-fed livestock plays in sequestrating carbon and rebuilding soil biology.  It will help us come together to share learning and expertise to create collaborative solutions for climate change mitigation.  The aim is that the government finally sees the benefit of reducing the number of public bodies funded to deliver multiple single issues objectives that create complexity and confusion to farmers and communities, without offering support for their alignment and co-delivery.  We want to be able to highlight the barriers to delivery; whether that is conflicting government policy; planning policy; regulatory baselines or just getting more support out there for people to be enabled to feel contributory to make a difference and act now. 

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Jenny Phelps, MBE. FWAG.

Jenny has over 30 years’ experience in facilitating and delivering complex locally led environmental projects that deliver international objectives. Jenny offers the integrated local delivery framework to help people understand how to take meaningful coordinated local action in order to mitigate against climate change and biodiversity loss. Jenny has a Master’s degree in Advanced Farm Management, from the Royal Agricultural University (where she now teaches two modules; Applied Farmland Ecology and The Farming and Integrated Environmental Local Delivery (FIELD) Module).

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Our Rare Welsh Oats

Written by Katie Hastings, Seed Sovereignty Network, who tells the story of rejuvenating regional heritage grain in Wales.

On a sharp day on the cliffs of the Pembrokeshire Coast last spring, a small group of farmers and growers met to place rare Welsh oat seeds in the ground. Where usually these seeds would be broadcast across a field or drilled in long rows, each of these rare oats was placed diligently by hand into carefully drawn channels. So momentous was this that the BBC focused their cameras on the sowing, broadcasting it on the 6-o-clock news across Wales. Gerald Miles – organic farmer of Caerhys Farm since the age of 16 – cracked his signature jokes as we picked each seed from their containers against a strong wind coming from the sea.

 Although these oats were kindly donated to us from the seed stores of the IBERS plant research centre, they were already ours. These oats – with names like Hen gardie, Ceirch llwyd, Ceirch du bach – were grown on Welsh soils for hundreds of years. The seed was saved by the communities that grew them and is a collectively owned commons. As different regional seeds were passed through generations they adapted to the soils and climates of the varied lands they grew in. These oats co evolved with Welsh farming communities, being saved for the traits the farmers selected and shaping the lives of those growing them in turn.

In the last 50 – 100 years we have lost these oats from our fields. Mixed farms of animal, crop and forest have been disappearing from under our noses. Where arable crops were once grown for animal feed and human food all over the varied conditions of Cymru, we now declare most of Wales ‘unsuitable’ for arable production. Feeding this fire is the fact that we have moved away from growing our native indigenous seeds, suited to our wet and luscious conditions, in favour of buying seeds bred to offer us better ‘performance’. Failing to see that seeds bred for high yields in industrial farming scenarios don’t work for smaller low input farms, we have forsaken the seeds that worked in our Welsh valleys in the past.

Coming together under the banner of the Llafur Ni (Our Cereals), our Seed Sovereignty Programme has been working with the farmers and growers on the ground who want to reclaim our grain seeds. Looking into the records of only one genebank we found 108 Welsh oat varieties secured against total extinction. But these seeds should not just be filed away in storage, they should be a part of our farms and our diets. These older seeds don’t just hold unknown genetic traits, unknown climatic tolerances, unknown disease resistance. They also hold the stories of the people who grew them and the history of our landscape. To let them disappear is to let a part of ourselves disappear.

Our Llafur Ni group decided to collectively sow Welsh oats on the clifftops of Caerhys Farm as a statement of reclamation. We were unprepared for the diversity these oats would show us, different shapes, sizes, sweetness and strength. Initially not a scientific experiment but a symbolic bringing into being of what should still be there, we started to take advice from experts at IBERS and the Organic Research Centre. We measured basic information about the oats growth, susceptibility to ‘lodging’ (falling over) and ripeness. While at the end of the year we were only able to harvest tiny quantities of seeds from these plants, we felt the weight of that first step on a long journey of resurrecting our indigenous grain seeds.

Our Llafur Ni network met again this autumn in the grand Guildhall in Aberteifi (Cardigan). Our numbers have swelled, our enthusiasm has focused. Smallholders, sheep farmers, market gardeners and seed library volunteers sat side by side to listen to two elder farmers tell us about the ways grains were grown, not too long ago, before industrial arable production.

Iwan Evans still grows the Ceirch du bach oats which were grown on his farm near Llandysul since “forever”. Iwan is now an island in a sea of diversity loss, still saving these Welsh oat seeds on his farm each year and keeping alive what would have once been commonplace. Joining with our group he has now been able to pass these seeds on to other growers in the hope that they will be safer preserved in several locations and slowly passed back to the farms who have lost them. He told us of his extensive vintage machinery collection and pledged machinery to our machinery ring so that others in the group can start to farm grains again.

Gerald Miles told us tales of threshing days when he was young, in which members of the community came together to process grain crops. Showing us pictures of beautiful farm machines which can be pulled by horses and run from small tractors, he made possible in our imaginations a type of low impact grain farming that was still widely practiced only 50 years ago. Giving us a call to action, he told us of the importance of continuing to reclaim and preserve our Welsh grains. “They could be the foods of the future” he said, “we might need them in order to survive”.

Llafur Ni are now planning to increase the varieties of seed reclaimed and spread the planting across 3 different farms to reduce the risk of losing precious crops. Aware that we are at the bottom of a mountain, it will take years to bulk these seeds into significant quantities, we are galvanised to work together and keep these seeds in farmers hands. As well as sharing seeds, we are also putting together lists of equipment that can be shared from farm to farm in order to better increase our Welsh grain production.

We are aware that the 108 Welsh oat varieties we found in one genebank are only the lucky ones that made it into that seed store. There is no record of the quantities of diversity lost across our country that never made it into the seed stores and breeding programmes. Now is the time to take back what genetic material we still have access to and not allow it to slip unnoticed into extinction. There is no better time to get involved in the front line of our indigenous seed preservation.

To join the Llafur Ni network contact the Seed Sovereignty Programme’s Wales Coordinator Katie Hastings on katie@gaianet.org .

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Author: Katie Hastings

Katie Hastings is the Wales Coordinator for the Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty Programme. She is the Director of a community food organisation in Mid Wales called Mach Maethlon, where she runs a farmstart training programme and works with businesses to increase the amount of locally produced food they are buying. Katie also grows wheat and oats as part of the Machynlleth Grain Growers and has produced vegetables for many years.

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GMOs in Conservation – Testing the Fences

In the first Jurassic Park movie, there is a scene where the head zookeeper reveals that the genetically engineered velociraptors have been systematically testing the electric fences that confine them to find out where they are weakest and where they are strongest.

Remarkably prescient for a popular film, it has become, throughout its franchise, a kind of I Ching of genetic engineering, covering themes of noble purpose gone astray and science for greed and profit vs science as a search for meaning and truth, the battle of man vs nature and the limits of genetic engineering and of conservation.

After nearly three decades it remains a good example of how science, fiction and metaphor can and do collide in the real world.

The rise of GMO 2.0

Over the last few years, ‘testing the fences’ has become fundamental to the biotech industry’s PR plan. For decades, genetic engineers have been fighting a losing battle to get the public to accept genetically engineered food. The first genetically modified (GMO) food approved for release was the Flavr Savr tomato, which came onto the US market in 1994 – a year after Jurassic Park made its cinema debut. 

In all that time, genetically engineered crops – modified to produce their own pesticides or to be resistant to repeated spraying with highly toxic weedkillers – have failed to reach any kind of meaningful scale anywhere except in the Americas. Consumer resistance is one reason for this, but the relatively limited types of GMO crops (maize, soya, oilseed rape and cotton dominate the marketplace) their association with higher pesticide use and the associated environmental destruction, as well as higher overall costs for farmers have also been influential.

Even so, the science of genetic engineering continues to advance. In recent years the number of potential uses for the technology has grown to encompass human health and medicine, farm animals, personal hygiene and cosmetic products and, perhaps most controversially, conservation.

Each of these uses represents a fence to be tested – Is the science a better fit or not? Is public acceptance greater or not? Can regulations be bypassed or done away with altogether, or is regulation crucial to safety and some measure of control in the face of uncertainty?

This rapid expansion of biotechnology into different areas is due to a new suite of genetic engineering technologies known as genome editing, which includes gene editing techniques such as CRISPR as well as synthetic biology and gene drives.

Of these, CRISPR is undoubtedly the most well known. What makes these new GMO technologies – sometimes referred to as GMO 2.0 – different is that they can create genetically engineered organisms more cheaply, more easily and more quickly than ever before.

A need for speed?

As the multiple crises that our planet faces have become apparent over the last few years, there is an increasing sense of urgency, a sense that we must act and we must act now.

In this swirl of panic and concern has emerged a report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Genetic Frontiers for Conservation: an assessment of synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation.

The report, three years in the making and published in May 2019, presents itself as an attempt to lay out the pros and cons of re-programming nature through new genetic engineering technologies.

Gene drives and synthetic biology, it said, could be a way of, among other things, reviving declining or even extinct species, eradicating invasive species, improving soil and therefore plant health and biodiversity. It could engineering trees to absorb more carbon or be resistant to diseases, such as the invasive fungus that plagues the American chestnut tree, and re-engineering insects for pest management.

It is a controversial approach on several levels and opens up important questions around the use of genetic engineering in rewilding, climate change mitigation and conservation.

Some of these questions are practical – the technology has yet to be proven to work. Some are ethical: What are plants and animals for? Are there legitimate boundaries between natural and synthetic? What are our responsibilities as stewards of the planet? Do these responsibilities also require the acknowledgement of limitations?

Questions, but not many answers

Questions have also emerged about the IUCN proposal itself. In its report Driving under the influence,  ETC Group in Canada reveal that of more than 40 individuals associated with the report, over half had a known pre-existing bias in favour of biotechnologies and/or a potential conflict of interest.

Pro-synthetic biology interest groups appear to have had a disproportionate influence on the writing of the report: at least 15 members of the group appear to be associated with or employed by Revive and Restore, Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents (GBIRd) or Target Malaria.

These three organisations are among the world’s most prominent and well-funded proponents of the development and deployment of gene drive organisms for environmental release.

Turning fields into labs

A new briefing from the Third World Network Biosafety Information Service spotlights concerns over the bewildering array of GE technologies – including gene drives – that essentially convert the environment into the laboratory, and can affect not only target organisms, but non-target organisms as well. This has implications for all kinds of plants, including crops and perhaps especially organic crops, that could easily be contaminated through inadvertent contact with gene drive ‘biomachines’.

In fact, we don’t know the full extent of how gene drives – which force genetic changes through entire species in the wild ­– might interact with the natural world. 

An increasing number of scientists, however, are raising the alarm. Among them is Prof Kevin Esvelt of MIT, developer of the gene drive. Esvelt believes that early and irresponsible promotion of the technique means: “We are walking forwards blind. We are opening boxes without thinking about consequences. We are going to fall off the tightrope and lose the trust of the public.”

That quote, from an article published in Pacific Standard notes: “Not since Robert Oppenheimer has a scientist worked so hard against the proliferation of his own creation.”

Risks as well as benefits

Some arguments for genome editing in conservation seem superficially compelling.

Synthetic biology – creating new man-made species in the lab – could help save some threatened species like the horseshoe crab.

The blood of this prehistoric creature is in demand because it contains a medically valuable molecule that aids the detection of bacterial contamination in medicines and medical devices. As a result, it is being harvested to near extinction. A synthetically produced alternative could help conserve these species and the shorebird populations that depend on them.

Gene drives are proposed as a way of neutralising disease carrying insects such as mosquitoes.

CRISPR, it is proposed could be used to improve disease immunity in populations of the endangered animals such as the black-footed ferret or to re-engineer bees to be immune to pesticides.

But gene editing can cause unintended adverse effects in animals. A recent Wall St Journal investigation uncovered unintended effects including enlarged tongues and extra vertebrae. Brazil’s plans to breed hornless dairy cattle, gene-edited with TALENs were recently abandoned when a study by the US Food and Drug Administration revealed that one of the experimental animals contained a sequence of bacterial DNA including a gene conferring antibiotic resistance.

The recent release of gene-edited, gene drive mosquitoes in Brazil is also instructive. The insects were supposed to breed with native mosquitoes and produce weak offspring that would die quickly without passing on their altered genome. Instead, the offspring have proved to be robust and are now breeding well beyond their original breeding grounds.

It is also a relatively short step from re-engineering wild animals to conserve them to re-engineering them for other purposes. Geese, badgers and bison, for example, are all implicated in infecting farm animals with various diseases. What are the potential consequences of genetically ‘editing’ these wild animals so they don’t impact farm animals and therefore farm profits? Could a genome-edited wild animal unwittingly become a reservoir for zoonotic diseases for which we do not yet have viable treatments? What happens to engineered soil microorganisms when released in the wild? How might they alter the soil structure and microbiome if, for example, genetically engineered organisms become the dominant species?

Who gets to speak?

In considering the use of genetic engineering for conservation, it quickly becomes apparent that there are many more questions than answers.

IUCN will make discussions around this issue a theme of its World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, 11-19 June 2020 and delegates will vote on specific actions the organisation should take and on a set of ‘principles’ that will guide the development of an IUCN Policy during the period 2020–24.

What is not clear yet is what will underpin those discussions, assessments and collaborations. What research will be included? What will be ignored? What values and goals will inform these decisions? What weight will be given to the concerns of different stakeholders? What does ‘informed consent’ mean for a technology that has multiple and unknown potential consequences?

IUCN recommends that conservationists and others need to engage with this topic and we agree. As proposed uses for genetic engineering technologies advance, all sides have been forced to ‘test the fences’ – to ask themselves where the limits lie and to consider the strengths and weaknesses of their positions.

But this process is not legitimate unless it ensures meaningful public dialogue on the use of genetic engineering in the natural world on which all of us depend.

It’s time to open up the conversation.

Further information: Beyond GM is a UK initiative, the aim of which is to raise the level of the debate around genetic engineering in food, farming and the environment. Launched in 2014, it is run by individuals with a deep experience of food, farming, activism and communication. Its work reaches out to multiple stakeholders but has a particular focus on citizen engagement.

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Pat Thomas

Director of Beyond GM. She is a journalist and the author of multiple books on environment, health and food. Pat is a former editor of the Ecologist magazine and has also sat on the boards of the Soil Association and the Organic Research Centre.

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