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Food, Farming and Countryside Commission

@ffc_commission

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With your help, we are bringing people together to find practical ways to improve our climate, nature, health and economy.

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🚨Hidden cost of UK’s food system is nearly £300 billion a year, and rising

📈 Updated analysis from @proftimjackson, commissioned by FFCC, shows the economic cost of the UK’s unhealthy food system has risen to £298 billion a year, up from £268 billion just two years ago.

💡Published just before Labour Party Conference, the findings point towards a clear set of policy principles:

1. Treat food and health policy as economic policy

2. Establish affordable healthy food as a practical right

3. Reshape the food environment with enforceable standards and product transparency

4. Redirect financial flows to align commercial returns with public value

5. Build a cross-government food and health mission

🔗 Read the news story and report via our bio link. by @ffc_commission

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25 days ago

💥New citizen-led report shows what works and what’s getting in the way of good food.

🚀In late 2025, the Citizen Advisory Council (CAC) ran What Works Here Inquiries in four very different regions of England. They found that in each place, beacons of good practice survive in spite of how the food economy is designed to work, not because of it, and the costs fall on the people and places least able to bear them.

🎯Their report, out today, outlines the barriers that hold good food back and makes recommendations for regional and national actions that can make food work better for everyone.

📗Read ‘From the Ground Up’ via our bio link. by @ffc_commission

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4 months ago

🚨Out now: Report argues Britain’s food economy needs to properly reward good food and farming.

Today, new analysis from FFCC's @crtaverner shows the real impact of a dysfunctional food system built around cheap food at all costs. Farmers and the public are losing out.

🍔 Push for low-cost calories has cheapened British food over decades

📉 Farming incomes have barely improved in real terms for 50 years

🛒 Tiny number of big businesses now dominate Britain’s food chain

🌾 UK’s long-term food resilience at risk in volatile world facing climate change

💪 Government must fix dysfunctional economy for public benefit

Read the @guardian exclusive and the report in full via our bio link. by @ffc_commission

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2 years ago

📝 New blog: Sympathy isn’t a jobs plan

💻 Ahead of Alan Milburn’s forthcoming review on youth unemployment, FFCC’s Director of External Relations Rebecca Renfro calls for bold ideas and creative thinking when it comes to getting young people into work in the age of automation and AI.

🌳 Rather than focusing on how benefits will change for young people, Milburn and the PM need to seriously look at how the work will materialise. The good thing is that there are bold ideas out there – like a national nature service. In Wales, The Nature Service is being developed by FFCC and more than 100 other organisations to build a national gateway into training, volunteering and early careers in nature recovery.

👏 “This is work that needs doing, in every community, that can’t be offshored or automated away, and that young people consistently say they care about. And not only this, we also know that active work, outside, is good for people’s health and wellbeing.”

🔗 Read the blog via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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3 days ago

📢 “Environmental practice that is already happening at scale remains invisible to sustainability metrics, unrecognised by certification schemes, and unsupported by public funding. This is not just a missed opportunity for recognition. It is a missed opportunity for transformation.”

👌🏼 Earlier this week, we published Dr Daniel Mafulul’s briefing drawn from his PhD research on Bangladeshi curry-houses. Here, Dr Mafulul shows how small food businesses are demonstrating ‘survivalist sustainability’: “environmental innovation driven by constraint, frugality, and cultural embeddedness.”

💡 Despite their environmental credentials, the sector faces obstacles for recognition, funding and institutional support. Through six policy recommendations, Dr Mafulul proposes a future of growth for a marginalised economy demonstrating good practice in today’s food system.

🔗 Swipe to read the key takeaways and read the full briefing via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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3 days ago

👏 “Reward innovation. Unless farmers are in a stable situation, they can't do that... It's really about giving the farmers enough confidence to be able to do something.”

🌳 In a new #FieldGuideForTheFuture, arable farmer Thomas Gent talks about how his family business have embraced regenerative agriculture. But, the risk of innovation has always been their burden to shoulder.

📢 The Gent Farm is an example of the creative solutions that are already happening on the ground across the country. To encourage others to do the same, Thomas wants to see government action to spread the risk more evenly in the transition to a fairer, more sustainable future.

🔗 Read the full Field Guide via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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5 days ago

📝 New briefing: Sustainability at the margins

🍳 Under increasing pressure of running a small food business, how are local entrepreneurs practising everyday sustainability?

🍚 Drawing on his PhD research on Bangladeshi curry-houses, funded by FFCC, @aston_business and CREME (Centre for Research on Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship), Dr Daniel Mafulul defines the practice of ‘survivalist sustainability’. Driven by economic constraint, small businesses are pursuing near-zero food waste, daily sourcing of fresh local food, low-carbon cooking techniques passed down through generations, and community-based resource-sharing.

💯 “Survivalist sustainability [is] environmental innovation driven by constraint, frugality, and cultural embeddedness. The concept challenges a foundational assumption that going green requires capital. In these kitchens, it requires ingenuity.”

📢 Dr Mafulul proposes six policy recommendations that could recognise, fund, and institutionally support an overlooked food sector with real environmental credentials.

🔗 Swipe to read the key takeaways and read the full briefing via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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6 days ago

We need to think more strategically about food in Lincolnshire. That's why we enlisted the expertise and imagination of leaders from across local government, food & farming businesses, education & research, community and health.

How has food in Lincolnshire come to this point? - and where should it go in the next decade?

There was strong agreement around:
- Good food as part of local economic strategy
- Opportunities for young people on farms, and good career pathways into food
- Sensory food education and chefs in Lincolnshire schools
- Infrastructure for local & regional processing and supply, including abattoirs
- Improving access to healthy Lincolnshire food through multiple routes, including farmer co-ops, farmers markets and supermarkets, a revival of allotments
- Research into reconnecting communities with food and better dietary health

Feeling the wind in our sails! There's much more to follow the Nourishing Lincoln workshop that was convened and hosted last Friday by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission @ffc_commission , the Greater Lincolnshire Food Partnership@lincolnshirefoodpartnership , and Doddington Hall & Gardens @doddingtonhall , at the Wild House @wilderdoddington taken in Doddington Hall and Gardens by @ffc_commission

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7 days ago

📢 Opportunity: are you passionate about building the next generation of environmental leaders?

🌳 The Nature Service / Y Gwasanaeth Natur, in partnership with The Open University in Wales, is hiring a Research & Innovation Fellow to help develop the evidence, insights and practical frameworks needed to make nature-based learning, participation, skills development and career pathways more visible, connected and accessible across Wales.

👏 You will play a key role in shaping clearer, more inclusive pathways into nature recovery for young people aged 16-25. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to the future of The Nature Service, which connects people with nature while helping to build the skills, experiences and workforce needed to restore it.

🔗 Deadline is Tuesday 13th October. Find out more and apply via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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10 days ago

📝 New blog: Don’t mourn – organise!

📢 Off the back of the controversy around the Sustainable Farming Incentive, FFCC Farming Policy Lead Dr @crtaverner calls for creativity, concrete action and a more strategic approach to funding the future of farming.

💯 Innovation is already happening all over the country. Farmers are working together to find solutions and new income streams. Private finance and natural capital markets offer yet more potential for farmers to reduce emissions, protect nature and make a decent living.

🎯 Everyone knows budget is tight. But the enthusiasm, ideas, and money already exist. Government needs to take an active role in crowding in the funds, acting more boldly to shape the market and pull the pieces together.

🔗 Read the blog via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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11 days ago

📝 New blog: Purpose, place and the missing plate

🌹 FFCC Chief Exec @suepr reflects on Labour Party Conference 2026 – and why a fairer, greener, healthier and more resilient food economy is critical to the government’s central ambition of growth.

⚖️ Over the course of the Conference, a theme emerged: we cannot rely on corporations to set their own guardrails. Regulating corporate power, devolving power to places and communities, and ensuring our everyday essentials work for the public interest and not the private interest can help build a more prosperous, resilient country.

🍏 It’s encouraging to see a government ready to challenge the status quo. But food is still not getting the attention it deserves. As Sue says, “The fact that our global and local food economies are both damaging the planet and its ecosystems, and the people in it, and increasingly precarious and vulnerable to global shocks, should put it front and centre of the whole cabinet.”

🔗 Read the blog via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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14 days ago

🎁 New blog: Spoilt for choice

📝 Following the memo from Inside Track highlighting the increasing fragility of supply chains, FFCC’s Head of Food Futures Mhairi Brown sets out what a resilient food system could look like.

🙌🏼 Initiatives across the country are already showing alternative systems are possible – helping build resilient regional food economies where more healthy, affordable and sustainable food is grown and eaten locally – with money flowing back into communities. Reassuringly, some projects like this will receive further support from Defra’s £10m Good Food Neighbourhoods programme, which was informed by the work of the Citizen Advisory Council.

🍓 However, this needs to be accompanied by a shift in corporate control. The consolidation of power in the food system within a small number of big businesses needs to loosen to allow regional resilience to flourish.

🔗 Read the blog via our link in bio. by @ffc_commission

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14 days ago