Image Event recording Event Recording: Counting on Nature - How should we value nature in our food systems? This event was co-hosted by TABLE and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food on 2 June 2025 in a hybrid format and took the form of a panel discussion moderated by Tara Garnett (Director, TABLE) with:Rohit Kaushish (Chief Economics Advisor, National Farmers' Union);Constance McDermott (Associate Professor and Jackson Senior Research Fellow in Land Use and Environmental Change, Oriel College and the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford);Vassilis Gkoumas (Economist, WWF-UK);Henry Leveson-Gower (Founder & CEO, Promoting Economic Pluralism).The event was inspired by the TABLE explainer Making Nature Count: How should we value nature in our food systems? (authored by Henry Leveson-Gower). Read
Image Explainer Making Nature Count: How should we value nature in our food systems? Natural systems are being degraded at an unprecedented rate, with rapid loss of biodiversity and an average temperature rise of almost 1.5˚C on pre-industrial levels in 2023. Most economists believe that these problems have arisen because the value of nature is not sufficiently considered in policy and economic decision-making, but within the field, different economists disagree about how to express nature's value. This has consequences especially within our food systems.https://www.doi.org/10.56661/d2feedad Read
Image Publication Tomorrow on the table: The politics and economics of food system transformation In October 2024, TABLE brought together a diverse range of stakeholders across the food system with the aim of exploring how they envisaged a better food future, and what system transformations would be needed to get there. The participants included non-governmental and civil society organisations, policymakers, philanthropists, community leaders, and academics from diverse disciplines. Over the course of the workshop, they together discussed, developed and refined different visions for the future of the food system based on three initially conceived visions: market-led, state-led, and bottom-up. This report synthesises the workshop methods and dialogue process, the discussions participants had and the areas of agreement that emerged. https://www.doi.org/10.56661/421fa6df Read
Image Essay What can the Dublin Declaration teach us about credible scientific advocacy? The Dublin Declaration is a pro-livestock statement that emerged from a Summit held in Ireland on the societal role of meat. While the Declaration has had influence in EU spaces, it has also attracted considerable criticism for its limited engagement with the climate, nature and social implications of the current livestock system, and for its authors’ apparent connections to the meat industry. Irina Herzon, who co-authored a response to the Declaration published in Nature Food in August, argues that, irrespective of those connections, the Declaration provides an example of a flawed scientific advocacy that should make us wary. Here, she sets out how selective evidence and unwarranted polarisation can compromise the integrity of academic engagement. Read
Image Explainer TABLE Summary series: Ecomodernism This piece is a summary of the TABLE Explainer What is Ecomodernism? and aims to define the concept and illuminate key debates. Citations and references for the information discussed below can be found in the full explainer. Read
Image Essay Power, policy and people’s rights: an interview with Shalmali Guttal The following interview was originally recorded in October 2021 between podcast co-host Samara Brock and the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, Shalmali Guttal. It has been edited for clarity and length.Focus on the Global South (Focus) is an Asian activist, policy research think tank that works with social movements, civil societies, government officials and the public on various aspects of globalization, economic financial policies, and environmental ecological issues. Focus brings diverse actors together to share and deepen the analysis of emerging power patterns and power relations, and to build broad collective mobilizations for global change. It produces analyses that illuminate relations of power, how they create and perpetuate inequality, exclusion, environmental destruction, and entrench marginalization at national, regional and international levels. It also aims to generate high quality, credible and accessible materials that contextualize, inform and support people’s struggles. Read
Image Project Power in the food system: what’s powering the future of protein? Protein is a ubiquitous topic in discussions of the food system right now, and one of the key concerns at the heart of many disagreements about protein and its environmental, health, and ethical implications is power. What is power, who has it, who ought to have more or less of it, and which forms of power are desirable or acceptable? In this project starting in 2022, we explore the role of power in the food system with a special focus on protein. Read
Image Explainer What is food sovereignty? Food sovereignty, “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems,” is often discussed as an alternative political framework and approach to food security (Nyéléni, 2007). Food sovereignty has grown as a countermovement to the growing dominance of industrial agricultural practices, the increasing power of corporations in the global food system, and the convergence of diets towards more imported and processed foods. This explainer explores food sovereignty as a concept and movement, how it differs from the concept of food security, criticisms of the movement, and evolving definitions. https://www.doi.org/10.56661/f07b52cc Read