How can government and businesses help farms reduce their climate impact, while balancing priorities like profitability, resilience, food production and nature? This question was at the heart of a series of conversations held with farmers across England over the summer by the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission – a piece of work commissioned by Defra to help inform the government’s forthcoming Food and Farming Decarbonisation Plan. The discussions highlighted a loss of trust in government around climate policy and the emissions data that informs it, and a demand from farmers for policy to look beyond emissions and take a whole systems approach to farm sustainability. In this week’s episode, the FFCC’s Charlie Taverner joins Nick to share key insights from conversations with the farmers tasked with decarbonising agriculture, whose opinions are often marginalised in policy discourse around food and climate.

In the week when the secretary of state, Angela Eagle, advised households to keep buffer stocks of several days’ worth of food and water, the independent watchdog said Defra should do more to strengthen food supply chain resilience to major disruptions. In a new report, the National Audit Office said the department has taken some steps to improve its preparedness in recent years, but has not done enough to engage critical stakeholders, including businesses. In this week’s episode, one of the report’s authors, Rich Sullivan-Jones, joins Nick to talk through the key findings of a report which lands at a time when extreme weather is already putting significant pressure on food supply chains. Rich also provides an update on government work to build a more resilient food system via the national food strategy for England, and considers whether the vital role of the foodservice sector in responding to food shocks is fully understood within government.

There can be few ingredients more essential to the hospitality and foodservice sector than the humble onion. From its role as the basis for soups and sauces, to its use as a standalone ingredient in burgers, stir fries and all manner of other dishes, the onion is one ingredient chefs cannot do without. Yet onion growers have just experienced their most challenging season ever following a summer of extreme heat and drought, with the British Onion Producers’ Association (BOPA) warning of major challenges with yields and quality. In this week’s episode, Nick is joined by BOPA’s chairman Ben Collins to highlight the difficulties extreme weather is causing onion growers, and set out the support British growers will need from buyers and policy makers to ensure a sustainable supply of onions long into the future.

Serving food and drink in reusable cups and containers is one of the most impactful ways businesses can reduce packaging waste, improve resource efficiency and embed the principles of a circular economy. Yet adoption of reuse systems at scale remains low, with logistical and cost barriers often seen as insurmountable. Compass Group is showing what’s possible in the UK & Ireland by rolling out Cauli's technology-enabled reusable food and drink packaging system across a range of sectors including healthcare and business and industry, eliminating almost 400,000 single-use items to date. In this week’s episode, Cauli co-founder Ming Zhao and Compass Group UK & Ireland’s head of environment Ashleigh Taylor join Nick to discuss the journey they’ve been on in scaling a reusable packaging system and why foodservice, with its closed-loop settings, is well placed to lead a long-awaited, industry-wide charge on reuse.

It's well-evidenced that serving more plant-rich dishes is an effective way for foodservice operators to reduce the climate impact of their food offer. The World Resources Institute works with organisations via its Coolfood initiative to deploy tools and techniques that empower consumers to choose more sustainable meal options. It recently published new guidance that looks beyond the behavioural science and explores the operational challenges operators can face in successfully scaling plant-rich dishes and how these can be overcome. In this week's episode, WRI's Edwina Hughes joins Nick to share her key insights for how businesses can make plant-rich dishes the go-to choice for customers.

The annual Groundswell Festival of regenerative agriculture took place at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire last week. In this week's bite-sized episode, Nick shares his key takeaways from the 10th staging of the event which speak to the trajectory of the regenerative movement, the tensions that still exist within it, and what it all means for farmers and businesses. In particular, Nick highlights growing scrutiny over the relationship between more sustainable food production and healthy consumption amid passionate debate over whether it matters how ingredients produced in regenerative systems end up being deployed within the food chain. As one speaker asked provocatively: 'Is a regeneratively farmed KitKat too good to be true?'

As experts continue to question the resilience of the UK’s food system amid geopolitical turmoil and weather extremes, Canada has forged ahead with developing a new national food security strategy. The document explicitly positions food security as national security and sets out how Canada plans to assert greater control over its food supply through investment in domestic production and infrastructure. In this week’s episode, Nick is joined by Sid Mehta, an expert in Canada’s food system with experience working across the foodservice, policy and consultancy spheres. Sid provides the background to Canada’s food system and explains the context behind the new food security strategy, the political economy that has shaped it, and what it tells us about the risk of relying on others to feed us in an increasingly volatile world.

In Monday’s Footprint In Focus feature we explored the implications of a new government-backed plan to triple the level of surplus food being redistributed to those in need. The plan has been pitched as an opportunity to turn the environmental problem of surplus food into a social opportunity. But it’s also raised concern that food redistribution risks being conflated with food security amid a surge in need for charitable provision. The food sharing app Olio sits at the heart of the redistribution ecosystem. It enables food businesses to offer surplus food for free to people within their local community. In this week’s episode, Nick speaks with Olio co-founder Saasha Celestial-One to discuss the origins and growth of Olio, how barriers to redistributing more food surplus can be removed, why she fully supports mandatory food waste reporting, and why it’s important to be clear about the issues redistribution can and can’t solve.

The UK Government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 87% by 2040 as part of its seventh carbon budget. Yet comprehensive plans to decarbonise agriculture and land use remain conspicuously absent from policy papers, with food production on track to become the UK’s largest source of emissions by 2050. In this week’s episode, Ruth Westcott from the charity Sustain joins Nick to discuss why food and farming has failed to receive the same level of policy attention as the energy and transport sectors, and why farmers need greater support to produce food that is good for health and the environment. Ruth also reflects on why ministers are so scared to talk about the need for dietary change to meet emissions targets, and the kind of levers that should be pulled to get us eating less meat and dairy, and more fruit, vegetables and pulses.

The cold chain describes the collection of businesses responsible for keeping temperature-controlled goods like meat, dairy and fresh produce moving safely and efficiently through supply chains: from source all the way through to restaurant kitchens and supermarket shelves. Trade body the Cold Chain Federation is concerned about growing risks to the chain from a range of threats including targeted cyber attacks, extreme weather events and disruptions to fuel and energy supplies, all of which are set out in a newly released whitepaper. Yet there’s a strong sense that government ministers continue to turn a blind eye to the unique challenges facing suppliers and distributors of perishable goods that make up 50% of the UK’s food supply. In this week’s episode, CCF chief executive Phil Pluck explains why the cold chain is essential to the effective functioning of the foodservice sector and why it’s high time for a resilience strategy that protects against current and future risks.