This month: Book your place at Big Tent 2025, giving farmers a voice, webinar with Tim Lang on UK food resilience … and more

Defra confirmed a national food strategy would be developed, public concern erupted over Bovaer methane-busting feed additive, Denmark agreed the world’s first tax on agricultural emissions, and more.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast opening up a world of new possibilities in multiple areas – and a lot of questions too. For food and farming, a big question is whether and how it can help us reduce emissions faster, in what is a critical decade for tackling climate change. In this whistle stop tour of what AI might mean for crop and livestock production, we also discuss the risks, unintended consequences and trade-offs.

Find our more about our new scoping study reports, awarded FlexFund projects, and a special issue of Nutrition Bulletin.

Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, confirmed yesterday that work is underway to develop a food strategy. Starting in the new year, Defra will begin to engage with food system actors to co-develop the strategy. Defra will work across a number of government departments and has the support of the PM.

This month: Book your place at Big Tent 2025, apply for next year’s ECR Board, sign up for our webinar on AI and food … and more

A digest of Henry Dimbleby and Dr Dolly van Tulleken’s report, Nourishing Britain: a Political Manual for Improving the Nation’s Health. The report is a how-to (and how not-to) manual for current and future politicians about tackling the UK’s diet-related ill-health. With thanks to our Policy Champion, Ali Morpeth, for her help digesting it.  

This report, authored by the UK government’s former food policy advisor Henry Dimbleby and public health expert Dr Dolly van Tulleken, draws on interviews with an unprecedented number of former prime ministers, health secretaries and other senior ministers to offer practical advice and insights on how today’s politicians can tackle to UK’s obesity crisis.

Individual irresponsibility – that’s the reason we’re all overweight, unhealthy and eating unsustainable diets, right? If you agreed with the dominant political messaging of the last few years, then you’d answer yes. But there’s a growing recognition that our environment – the shops and food available in our neighbourhoods, the advertising we see, how different foods are costed and displayed, etc – is the main driver of dietary habits.

Find our more about our new Champion for Just Transition and Citizen Engagement, and webinars on behaviour change and inheritance tax.

This report by Professor Tim Jackson, commissioned by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) offers a comprehensive estimate of the food-related cost of chronic disease, caused by the UK’s current food system.

As UNFCC COP29 kicks off in Azerbaijan, an oil-producing, authoritarian state. What could negotiations this year, mean for food and farming?  Our co-lead, Prof Tim Benton, has spent much of his career working with governments around the world on climate change and food system transformation. He’s been to many COPs and gives his assessment.