Awarded: £4,992

This data project will gather evidence around the impacts of more localised, organic and circular routes to market, and will explore ways that agroecological traders could be seen as more resource-efficient than globalised supply chains. Organic farming increases soil carbon and biodiversity, and reduces emissions; while social enterprises operating locally – buying from local farmers, selling to local people – reduce emissions associated with transport, refrigeration and packaging. The Better Food Traders’ Regional Food Hubs are also likely to include circular practices, by sharing distribution networks and resources, or by including food surplus redistribution as part of their model.

The toolkit produced in the project will support any food business with similar aims to emulate them, by creating trading benchmarks and identifying key metrics for net-zero, circularity and social impact.

The study will be based on a cohort of 15 Regional Food Hubs.

Findings

We made impact in three ways which each directly aid progress towards net zero:

1. Our research findings have revealed an urgent need for standardized Emissions Factors for
   individual food types, specifically catering for business who prioritise domestic, organic and
   agroecological producers.
2. Webinar: This communicated our findings to an audience of researchers and consultants from
   the AFN Network+ who are ideally placed to target this gap and develop the research
   required to fix this issue. If retailers can accurately demonstrate their carbon advantage, this
   sector will grow and therefore the UK will be able to move towards net zero emissions from
   food and agriculture.
3. Report: We published and widely circulated a very clear and accessible toolkit which any
   retailer can use to start calculating their emissions. This will give them visibility over their
   carbon footprint thus allowing them to make impactful decisions across their business to
   make the greatest reductions in an efficient manner.

Further activity

We will take this work forward in three ways:

1. As a result of this work, we have already been awarded a place on the Carbon Literacy Food
   SMEs scheme, through which two staff members will be trained in carbon literacy. They will
   then deliver training to the 200 businesses in our network, cascading the effects of carbon
   literacy to take this sector towards net zero.
2. Using carbon calculation skills gained by the team, we will seek collaborations with our
   member businesses to help them calculate their emissions. Two retailers have already come
   forward asking for support with this.
3. We will seek collaborations with researchers and civil-society organisations in this sector to
   improve the landscape for small businesses to be able to make reliable carbon estimates,
   facilitating carbon reductions in this sector.

Outputs

1. A public webinar.
2. A free toolkit for businesses, sector organisations and academics, detailing our findings and a
   recommended approach for SMEs to start carbon accounting.