Over the dozen or so years since we began running this event, I have spoken about our food system’s impact upon our health, and that of the planet’s environment, of which we are a part.
Distracted as we are by ‘like-for-likes’, ‘latest food trends’, and our latest ‘new site opening’….. it often feels to me like we are missing a critical fundamental.
Our food system is a truly wondrous thing – just find your nearest elderly relative and ask them what the range of their diet was in the early 1930’s, and then compare it to today. In just one century we have transformed choice and created enough calories to feed a world population four times its 1930’s scale.
Were he still alive today my father would point out the irony that even though his generations entire diet was organic, in 1930 you didn’t have to pay through the nose at Waitrose to get access to it.
But our wondrous food system is not entirely so. Not by a long way. It is harming both our health and the planet to such an extent that it is now inevitable that we will see major intervention from governments around the globe at some point to tame its impacts. Quite when will be less predictable – many governments in history have discovered that tinkering with food supply (and costs) has been one of the few consistent reasons for civil unrest.
The key area for focus may well initially be health, because diet-related disease costs the UK almost £7bn each year, and a high proportion (of the 1.3m people economically inactive through sickness this year) suffer from diet-related conditions.
Almost three-quarters of adults aged 45-74 in the UK are either overweight or obese. Obesity levels have doubled since 1993 and are forecast to continue to rise.
We spend 11% of GDP on the NHS in the UK – one need only look at the US number of 17% to see how spiralling obesity levels can impact heathcare costs.
Food and nutrition scientists are increasingly pointing the finger at ultra-processed foods as a primary cause of weight gain. These are often defined as mass-produced foods that contain multiple ingredients that would not normally be found in a home kitchen. Currently, 57% of daily energy intake of UK adults is through UPFs, compared to say Italy at less than 20%.
As obesity levels climb we can expect healthcare costs to follow. As costs rise so the pressure for intervention will grow, and the more attractive the risk vs cost saving ratio on legislative intervention will become. Considering the role that UPF plays in your business might well be worth considering. Watch this space on this one.
As our good friends at Zero Carbon Forum often remind us, global food-system emissions are roughly 30% of the world’s total GHG emissions. As hospitality operators have progressed beyond the management of Scope 1 and 2 Carbon emissions into Scope 3, the complexities of carbon and food have become more obvious.
To determine the carbon footprint of an ingredient you have to know how it was farmed, and what has happened to it between field and fork. Of particular importance is understanding the value of soils, and how different management techniques can dramatically improve carbon performance.
In spite of all humanity’s achievements, we survive as a species as a result of a six-inch layer of soil, and the fact that it rains. Yet, on average we put around 2kg (per UK adult) of chemical products into our farmland each year.
How we use our land and our chemicals has a massive impact on biodiversity – since 1970 UK wildlife species have declined by 19% on average, and nearly 1 in 6 species (16.1%) are now threatened with extinction.
Which feels like a good segue into farming.
There are 209,000 farms in the UK. Which curiously makes it look a little like hospitality with its c150,000 businesses.
It provides 462,000 jobs, compared to hospitality’s 3.5m, and arguably even more so than hospitality it remains a very low margin way of making money. Average farm profit in 2023 was £82k of which on average £25k was subsidy.
We’ve seen tractors in the streets in London in recent weeks protesting about the new Agricultural Property Relief %ges, but there is a feeling amongst many farmers that this policy decision was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Brexit promised much but delivered little, except an increase in barriers to trade, and cheaper imports which are farmed at lower production standards.
Brexit also brought a change to approach on subsidies, from a land based subsidy to a smaller payment to deliver improved environmental outcomes.
The transition to ELMS, the governments “Environmental Land Management Scheme” has been slow, and laden with teething problems.
Meanwhile the 7 supermarket chains with over 5% of market share control 88% of all retail food sales.
All of these dynamics are a recipe for farmers to feel under pressure and undervalued.
And then there is an epidemic of blue-tongue, waterlogged fields and flooding….It’s a wonder we have any farmers in the room tonight – but we do!
So why did we put together a Farm Study Tour?
Well, mostly because we feel that much of what I have covered in the past few minutes is not fully understood by that many of our operators in hospitality.
We are entering a period where knowing about how farming works will empower us to make the best choices on the food we put in front of our customers – and what could be more important than that? In the words of one of guests on the tour – spoken from real experience “The further from the real, on-farm issues we get, the more seductive simplicity becomes – and the more falsely successful it can seem.”
