Written by Jo Bodimeade, Fran Harris, and the event speakers. Opinions presented represent those of the corresponding speaker and in the context of London Climate Action Week.

There is no doubt that changes to our food system are needed if we are to achieve global climate goals. Our food system is responsible for 25-30% of global carbon emissions. If we don’t change our global food system, we will not be able to achieve the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Climate Agreement - even if fossil fuel emissions stopped today. It is clear that we need to improve efficiency and sustainability of food production, shift dietary patterns, reduce food waste. It is less clear how we can make the changes happen. We know the ingredients, we now need the recipe. 

In this year’s second digital installment of London Climate Action Week, on 16th November 2020 we brought together key organisations working across the food system to discuss what needs to be done to achieve a net zero food system. We’ve pulled together some take-home messages from each speaker, outlining their suggestions for moving our food system forward, and the insightful contributions from the audience. 

Diets

Kicking off the event was Dr Rosemary Green from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. It was good news from Rosie - a small shift in the foods we eat towards healthier options could lead to a big impact on our carbon footprint and could also save the NHS a vast amount of money. Rosie is part of the Citizen’s Climate Assembly, who have recently released their recommendations for the UK government indicating that we should reduce the amount of meat and dairy we are eating, amongst other things. 

Recent studies show that one third of UK citizens consider themselves to be eating less meat already, so a cultural shift is already happening. However, currently the change is concentrated among a relatively small section of the population. London tends to eat healthier than other parts of the UK and therefore have a lower carbon footprint, but this may be due to a combination of greater wealth and greater access to different types of food. To reach the cultural tipping point where eating more plant based diet becomes the norm, we also need to work with the food industry as they drive the majority of our food choices. More research is being done through the SHEFS project to help understand the relationships between diet, environment and food choices in the UK. 

Consumer

Jo Hand, founder of Giki gave insights into our capacity as citizens to instigate change. Our lifestyles have a footprint. Our homes, the way we get about and what we eat make up the majority of this: our food alone accounts for 25% of our carbon footprint. We have an opportunity to cultivate a more sustainable supply chain from businesses with a more mindful demand of products. Giki is a free, fun and interactive app that helps you find sustainable and healthy items in UK supermarkets. It enables you to reduce the impact of the items you buy, because a pound is a vote for practices that either protect or persecute people and planet. Through Giki Zero, you can understand, track and reduce your personal carbon footprint by finding steps that fit your budget and lifestyle.

Audience Q - For Giki Zero webapp, what data is used to calculate the carbon footprint?

We use a consumption based approach, looking at 32 different areas of an individual’s lifestyle and we calculate carbon emissions by looking at how much is consumed and the carbon intensity of that consumption.

Food Policy

Big change comes from big policy. Feedback’s work aims to ensure food waste and sustainable diets are prioritised by policy makers. Our speaker, Krysia Woroniecka, explained that voluntary commitments from businesses don’t bring enough change. If we want to halve food waste and shift to sustainable diets then policies should support business models that bring citizens and producers closer together and encourage us to value local production. Imagine how healthy we would feel if everyone in our family ate their 7 veg a day, and how connected we would feel if we knew the farmer that grew that veg! 

Although direct food waste from supermarkets represents 3% of total food waste, they are indirectly driving a system of overproduction and over-purchasing, leading to waste in the supply chain and in people’s homes. A focus on consumer solutions negates the role of supermarkets in driving this waste. Feedback believes that our government should support shortening of supply chains thus promoting more regional food production and distribution to empower local communities. Supporting alternative business models with marketing support and access to markets and land could displace the dominance of supermarkets. 

But importantly, all of this can only happen in a system that gives its citizens the sovereignty and power over food choices. Governments continue to subsidize the production and advertising of unhealthy, unsustainable foods including processed meat while only 1% of direct agricultural subsidies go to horticulture. Citizens need to be empowered by the government to make healthy food choices through restrictions on advertising subsidies for destructive food companies, and by promoting and normalising healthy and sustainable plant-based wholefoods. Additionally, we need mandatory transparent food waste reporting by large businesses. We must think of food redistribution as an intermediary step; it’s not a solution to food poverty or food waste.  Feedback also campaigns for practical policy on industrial meat and dairy agriculture to address the power of companies which collectively produce as many emissions as the largest, dirtiest fossil fuel corporations.

Local Authorities

The team at Sustain, including our speaker Ruth Wescott, have mapped all of the climate action plans implemented by local authorities across the UK. This excellent work has demonstrated that, although 75% of councils in the UK have declared a climate and nature emergency, only 92 have delivered an action plan (that could be found), and 67% don’t cover food at all.

Councils must be given the resources and power to develop and implement the changes that are suitable for them. For example, Preston has implemented an action plan for its local system. They have shifted public procurement towards more sustainable local options, which has in turn benefited the economy. Public procurement has a huge potential for bending the social norms towards more sustainable food systems. By setting standards or goals for the purchasing of food through public bodies, we could see a shift - but councils need the power to do so. 

Audience Q - What are the main ideas Sustain would like to see, or think should be implemented in local councils? 

1) Exemplary food in schools, care homes, etc

2) Events on council land have a food policy (even if basic, like no factory-farmed meat or removing single-use plastic)

3) Use licensing powers to incentivise good business behaviour

4) Councils own a lot of land - it should be used to support sustainable farming

5) Councils make space and resources available for good food businesses (market stalls, premises, good business rates, etc)

6) A network of new drinking water fountains

7) refuse to grant licenses to most polluting food businesses

Redistribution

OLIO is a free food redistribution app that enables neighbours to share food and reduce waste at home. The app also supports thousands of food safety trained volunteers to redistribute tonnes of surplus food from businesses and supermarkets that would otherwise go in the bin. More than 70% of (post farmgate) food waste happens in the home, of which ¾ would’ve been edible, but the app offers a promising solution for tackling food waste through it’s 2.5 million strong network. 

OLIO is currently working with Local Authorities to identify food poverty and offer valuable insights into the problem. By reviewing the behaviour of those sharing and requesting on the app, OLIO is providing a platform to measure food poverty and predict areas of vulnerability. There are 8 million individuals going hungry in the UK and this detailed data will highlight priority areas for action and offer unique comparisons on food poverty before, during and after coronavirus.

Audience Q - How do you guarantee food security of the products shared in the OLIO app?

We train our volunteers in food safety so food redistributed from businesses is safely redistributed. Peer to peer food exchange relies on individuals consuming items that are fit for their personal consumption.

Audience Q - With OLIO how do you track your CO2 reduction or where do you get your primary saving from? 

There is a personal impact board on each user account that is calculated with your OLIO usage.

Household food waste

In the UK, 70% of post farm gate waste occurs at the household level. In a system which is designed for over-production and over-purchasing, this is a predictable consequence. Helen White, Special Advisor on Household Food Waste at WRAP, presented some interesting findings on behaviour shifts over the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining that UK citizens have shown an estimated 7% reduction in the amount of food they are wasting at home. Though the reasons behind this are not fully understood, it will likely lead to a positive shift in how people manage their food at home, and has the potential to be long lasting. 

With their new campaign launching “wasting food - it’s out of date” WRAP is giving hard hitting messages to citizens on the impact of their food waste, highlighting how food waste is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, in the hope that it will make wasting food as socially unacceptable as not wearing a seat belt. 

Contributions from our audience

Our speakers proposed six actions that would enable our food system to move to net zero. We asked our audience if they were speaking to the Mayor of London, what they would say is the most important action that should be prioritised. The six actions were prioritised in order of preference, and the results are below.

The most important action was believed to be binding policy for food sustainability, including mandatory reports, targets and tax incentives for the private sector - with 36% of our audience ranking this top priority. The least important was education; 30% of our audience ranked this bottom. However, the total scores for each policy were close so these distinctions between most and least important were far from unanimous. This reiterates that moving towards a net zero food system will require multiple actions; there isn’t one silver bullet. 

Other important interventions suggested by our audience

• Government intervention on education and tax mechanisms to make sustainable food  accessible to all financially 
• Meat and dairy reduction targets 
• Higher taxes or restrictions on unnecesary/ unsustainable food imports with trade policies that support sustainable and regenerative farming locally 
• Increasing university qualifications within sustainability. (Making learning more accessible)
• Land reform across the UK to remove barriers to entry for new entrant farmers interested in sustainable food production, democratise food production, and reduce costs of sustainable farming systems. Heavy restrictions on commercial advertising for unhealthy and unsustainable items
• Mandatory food sustainability education for Mayor, local government officials, public sector bodies and basically all the key stakeholders that need to take action

Conclusion

Moving towards a new London Mayoral election in May, and the much anticipated COP 26 in Scotland 2021, this webinar highlighted the massive amount of ambition and work to improve our food system. There is a desire to include more binding protocols on sustainable food production, distribution and waste for business and public sectors in the future. All members of this webinar and their organisations, as well as many others, work hard to keep the pressure on for food policy reform and action. If you believe this is the way forward, we encourage you to support their work and processes in any way you can. The first and biggest change you can make as a food citizen is to reduce your food waste at home, and support friends, family and colleagues to do it too. Keep an eye on your dietary choices, replacing meat and dairy with plant-based foods where you can, and supporting local producers and companies with a good track record on sustainable food production and packaging. Write to your MP to keep the momentum for food system reforms, and rallying communities around sustainable food systems in your local area. Together we can bring food into focus for a net zero emission future.

Q&A from the London Climate Action Week event.