Business Forum: boosting food security, ethically

Business Forum: boosting food security, ethically

In-person Business Forum dinner meeting

The new Government has set out its stall, with Defra announcing five priorities, of which ‘boosting food security’ was one. The UK’s Food Security Index 2024 suggested a ‘broadly stable’ picture, as the UK emerges from a ‘challenging period of global supply chain shocks’. However, with the very wet winter and spring, domestic food production will be severely affected in 2024/25.

The NFU recently highlighted the importance of upholding and increasing the nation’s self-sufficiency levels, to help boost food security (UK is 62% self-sufficient in food, according to Defra stats). Should that be part of the ambition? How can we avoid equating food security (just) with greater self-sufficiency?

Meanwhile, Sustain and others are urging government to build a holistic understanding of food security, asking, what is food security without nutritional security, household food security, and environmental and climate security? The myopic focus on yield as a proxy for food security must change: decades of intensification have all but threatened our long term food production. Defra’s own Food Security Report identifies climate change and biodiversity loss as the greatest threats to UK food security.

We will interrogate what ‘food security’ really means, when we consider the wellbeing of people, animals and planet. We will explore what different parts of the sector can, and should, do to contribute to greater food security – crucially, in ways that simultaneously address other ESG priorities, rather than just aiming to boost yields and store up trouble for the future. How can agri-food businesses appropriately and fairly influence government policy on sustainable food security?

This in-person dinner meeting in central London will provide an opportunity for participants to:

• Assess what food security can and should mean
• Consider what the sector can do to ensure that boosting food security is not narrowly defined in terms of yield and productivity
• Explore Defra’s appetite for boosting food security (ethically) and how agri-food businesses could/ should be involved
• Consider what practical steps and collaborative opportunities there are for companies to support this agenda under a new UK Government

Speakers include Kath Dalmeny (Chief Executive of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming) and Belinda Ng (Youth Leader Act4Food Act4Change, Executive Producer of SustainaPod, sustainable food systems advocate and corporate sustainability consultant). Dan Crossley, Executive Director of Food Ethics Council, will chair the discussion.