Georgie Barber of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission puts forward the case for Land Use Frameworks as a vital tool for meeting climate, nature, food and health challenges, and considers the features that determine their success. 

Following last year's popular event series, TABLE will again be hosting a series of 3 online events this autumn leading up to COP28:Nitrogen, climate change and food: showing the connections on 16 October at 5pm BSTCan nature-based solutions deliver on their promise? on 31 October at 5pm GMTChanging diets to tackle climate change - what’s the role of government? on 14 November at 5pm GMTPlease join us as we explore questions regarding the evidence and values behind debates around food systems, nature and governance.Update: These events have already occurred. Please use the links below to watch the event recordings.

TABLE’s director, Tara Garnett, gave a talk at the Wageningen University & Research (WUR) symposium on the environmental impact of food systems earlier this summer. We are summarising the talk here, because it provides a good introduction to TABLE’s approach to food system debates.

This reflection about family farming in the UK – and some of the changes seen over 5 generations – was written in response to a conversation on social media, which led to the question: have we given up on the mixed family farm as a food producing entity? About the author: Richard Bainbridge is a 3rd generation English farmer and retired Methodist Minister.

Researcher Alma Igra finds that what it means for a species to be native has long been bound up with ideas of human belonging: relationships with animals have been one of the many ways in which colonisers have enacted and justified control over people, resources and animals. In this blog she asks if acknowledgement of this colonial legacy can give us a broader understanding of what it means to protect nature and who we protect it for, and a more inclusive approach to animal and environmental care. Alma Igra is a historian who writes about food, science and animals in the 20th century. She completed her PhD at Columbia University in 2020 and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy.

On 11 July, the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery hosted a debate between George Monbiot, a prominent critic and author, and Allan Savory, a founder and leading voice for Holistic Management. The event was titled "Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?" and was chaired by Professor EJ. Milner-Gulland, Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford. TABLE's director Dr Tara Garnett was asked to write about her takeaways from the event. This blog was originally published on the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery's website.