Governance, policy, and power | TableDebates

A gavel on a counter. Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm via Unsplash.

Food and climate: Challenging policy makers

In this piece, Sue Dibb introduces opportunities for food policy change in the UK.FCRN member Sue Dibb is Executive Director of Eating Better, the UK civil society alliance of over 50 organisations working together to help people move towards eating less meat and dairy and more sustainable alternatives.

Foodsource

What can be done to shift eating patterns in healthier, more sustainable directions?

Eating patterns (or diets) are an important point of interconnection in food systems between human health and wider environmental impacts. Shifts in how people consume towards sustainable health eating patterns can bring multiple benefits. And when they are undertaken by whole populations, their overall effects can be considerable. Although there is much we still don’t know, the broad trends of what sustainable health eating patterns look like are known well enough to take action today. However, this presents another difficult challenge: how can eating patterns (at the individual and population scale) be shifted towards those that are healthier and more sustainable? Understanding this problem and its potential solutions provides a useful primer on the way in which consumption in food systems takes place through a combination of human choices (whether conscious or not), and is influenced by the wider contextual environment that actively constrains and influences these choices.

Tea and biscuits on a wooden table. Photo by Robert Bye via Unsplash.

Food, Brexit and the Consequences: what can academics and the UK food movement do?

In this piece, FCRN member Tim Lang reflects on what Brexit means for the UK food system, sustainability and inequality. He calls for the food movement to organise by highlighting priorities, tasks, and areas of particular concern where joint action is needed. If you want to read more about Brexit implications for the food and agriculture sector, we have listed a number of resources on the topic in our latest newsletter.Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy. Hill farming in Lancashire UK in the 1970s formed his interest in relationship between food, health, environment, culture and political economy. He co-wrote Food Wars (2015), Unmanageable Consumer (2015), Ecological Public Health (2012) and Food Policy (2009).We very much hope that you will add your feedback, ideas and comments to this post. You will have to register as a member to comment on this post, but if you have already created a member profile, you just need to be sure you are signed in.

Climate change and agriculture report image: IIED

Climate change and agriculture: can market governance mechanisms reduce emissions from the food system fairly and effectively?

This report examines what part market governance mechanisms (regulatory, fiscal, voluntary and information-related) can or could play in addressing GHG emissions from the food system, focusing on the two extreme ends of the supply chain – the process of agricultural production, and patterns of consumption.