12 November 2025
Briefing
DIGEST: Learning from the Champions, Part 1
Champions are at the heart of the AFN Network+ and have played a key role in supporting our mission of identifying key research gaps that may be holding the UK food system back from transitioning towards a net zero UK by 2050.
In a series of digests, we will be sharing a little more about their work and what we have learned from them.
Champions have supported our mission by
- Drawing on their expertise and specialist knowledge of the agri-food sector
- Running engagement activities centred around their respective themes, building on existing AFN research and outputs and the work of previous AFN Champions
- Helping synthesise ideas and thinking from across the AFN and the wider stakeholder community to ensure inclusive input in defining plausible pathways to net zero, through agri-food,
- Identifying the research priorities and policy innovation required to deliver a food system that is sustainable, economically viable, socially just, and secure.
In this digest, we cover the work of three Champions – Charlotte Wheeler, Emily Norton and Saher Hasnain.
Charlotte Wheeler, Year 2 Champion for Circular Food Systems
Charlotte is a Policy Consultant at ICF specialising in Agriculture and Environmental Policy. Before this, she was Research Officer and Regional Development Manager at Pasture for Life, where she established regional farmer knowledge exchange groups and collaborated on research pertaining to low-input livestock systems.
Charlotte examined the research and application of low-input circular practices on farms, specifically crop-livestock integration, agroforestry, and low-input livestock. This was done by identifying knowledge gaps, targeted webinars, farm tours to showcase practical applications and cross-sector networking to build links between academics, civil society and farmers.
Charlotte’s report found that climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality are interconnected challenges that cannot be solved in isolation. It advocates for greater recognition of integrated, nature-based solutions, particularly agroecology and circular, low-input farming systems, which offer potential for carbon storage, biodiversity enhancement, and climate resilience, while maintaining productivity within ecological boundaries. These approaches deliver both climate mitigation and adaptation benefits, and can support more resilient and just food systems.
“It was invaluable to share ideas, contacts, and test and/or ground-truth theories and ideas with the other champions. This was particularly true given we all work in different positions in the food system, and might typically not have the opportunity to collaborate.”
Current UK land use and food policy are constrained by siloed approaches and narrow efficiency metrics, which fail to address the complexity of sustainability challenges. There is a lack of funding, research, and policy support towards low-input and circular practices. The report highlights the need for multifunctional land use approaches, where agricultural landscapes deliver multiple outcomes rather than maximising a single metric.
Charlotte critiques current monitoring and evaluation frameworks for oversimplifying complex systems and perpetuating “path dependency” by marginalising agroecological practices. The report stresses that governance structures must evolve to support cross-sector collaboration, devolved decision-making, and local food economies. Public procurement and integrated local delivery frameworks are highlighted as tools for embedding social and environmental value within food policy. The report calls for new frameworks that evaluate outcomes across multiple metrics and governance structures that enable cross-sectoral and grassroots collaboration.
Agroecology and circular farming practices (such as agroforestry, crop-livestock integration, and low-input livestock systems) are recommended for a larger role in food system transformation, given their ability to deliver against climate, biodiversity, and social ambitions.
Emily Norton, Year 3 Policy Champion for Land, Agriculture and Carbon
Emily is the founder of Farm Foresight, a strategic advisory service for the land management sector. A lawyer by training, Emily has 25 years’ experience in food and farming, she has expertise in natural capital influences on land, food and farming and sits on several advisory boards. In June 2025, Emily began work as the chair of AHDB.
Emily’s research explored how far the goal of net zero is impacted by competing priorities and headwinds relating to its political, moral and social framing, and how a roadmap can and should balance these perspectives.
Emily’s role as a policy champion for land, agriculture and carbon saw her become one of the most prolific ambassadors for AFN Network+, attending almost 30 events, chairing panels, roundtables and authoring papers. The conclusion of this comprehensive stakeholder engagement led to several impactful findings, including that there is a lack of logic between scenarios and political realities, in terms of a transition to net zero. Her work was used to inform briefing papers, the AFN’s scenario planning, the transformations solutions hub and the final AFN Network+ Roadmap.
“It has been the most amazing privilege to work with academics at the forefront of climate science and experts in communications and policy design. I have learnt a huge amount!”
In a critique exploring how hitting the target of net zero might miss the point, Emily analysed how technical, systemic and moral perspectives around net zero have their own strengths and pitfalls. She concluded there is a danger in becoming overly focused on the target of net zero by a particular date, which could see, for example, land use change to deliver carbon sequestration as an end goal, rather than seeking multifunctional land use systems that retain economic vibrancy. Among her recommendations for ongoing work in this area, Emily found there should be continued and broad cross-party engagement on net zero themes, alongside support for existing work with farmers and alternative ways of describing net zero. As she primarily worked with farmers and politicians, her work highlighted how net zero should be politically relevant and inclusive for those impacted by the transition.
Overall, Emily’s deep engagement with farming communities, politicians and narratives around net zero has led to her conclusion that any roadmap to net zero must not prioritise numbers over human values, and should attempt to blend moral urgency, mechanistic modelling, legal targets and radical honesty.
Saher Hasnain, Year 2 Champion for Healthy and Sustainable Diets
Saher is an environmental scientist and researcher, currently an Assistant Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. She was previously with the University of Oxford’s Food Systems Transformation Group.
Saher’s research looked at how systematic inequalities trap lower socio-economic communities in unhealthy, unsustainable cycles and impedes progress towards a just food transition and net zero.
Setting out to investigate how inequalities impede progress towards net zero, Saher replaced workshops in favour of in-depth interviews with her participants, who were specifically recruited from a range of diverse backgrounds. She particularly drew on participants from faith groups, and individuals from lower socio-economic groups, minorities and food system support groups. Her questions explored sources of ‘perverse’ resilience, experiences of food insecurity, and perspectives on net zero and just transition, aiming to move beyond individual choice narratives.
“The food system requires a systemic rethink and redesign for outcomes across health and nutrition security, socio-economic wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. I used the community and faith networks and their gatekeepers to get insights from those who tend not to be spoken to for these particular topics.”
The majority of those interviewed reported that they would like the luxury to care about things like net zero, but are trapped in vicious cycles of dependency and emergency food provision, and feel locked out of ‘nice to have’ outcomes. As a result, Saher concluded that net zero cannot and should not be achieved without addressing the fundamental inequities built into the food system, and anything else is tinkering at the edges. Her work found that the food system requires a systemic rethink and redesign for outcomes across health and nutrition security, socio-economic wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. She also found that the food environment is about more than just access to retailers, affordability and proximity. Her participants knew what a healthy and nutritious diet was and would like to be able to access the resources in a dignified way to be able to make those choices.
Her key recommendations, based on this in-depth and carefully structured research, included that social and economic interventions are needed to break the entrenched food system of inequality and injustice. While there is a rich body of literature looking at the health and sustainability of diets and food environments, she noted there is a lack of research on the impact of regulatory incentives and disincentives, and that structural inequalities cannot be addressed without addressing exclusions and disempowerment.
