“I've been very fortunate over the years in working with farmers and with agriculture generally, and no two businesses are the same. No two farmers are the same... So you can't paint everybody with the same brush within agriculture. We need to talk to them [all] more often” - Tudor,  Food Conversation, Wales.

With farming eyes turning towards Oxford this week, these could be the most consequential farming conferences in years.  2025 is the midway point of this crucial decade for climate and nature, at the start of which many pledges were made, targets set, strategies penned. And here we are, staring down the runway at the second half, after five years of slow progress, false starts, distractions and missteps. For the new Secretary of State, Steve Reed, coming to Oxford to speak to farmers, it’s a timely opportunity to offer much needed leadership to a sector which desperately needs to hear his commitment and confidence.

At the end of last year, farmers’ protests captured the headlines. Amongst the familiar tractors and tweeds, a voluble minority of climate deniers, conspiracy theorists and clickbait farmers provided plenty of material for GB News. 

In sharp contrast, Sarah Langford’s lovely piece in the FT over Christmas painted a very different picture, of new entrants and next generation farmers, brimming with ideas and energy. These farmers are everywhere. Kicking off with Oxford in January, through Groundswell, Carbon Calling and Fields Good in summer, to Land Alive in November, the calendar is now packed with innovative, inspiring events. There are Nuffield Scholars, the Emergent Generation network, Innovative Farmers, and all those proudly pursuing nature-friendly, pasture-fed, organic and regenerative approaches. The movement for change is growing at scale and at pace.

And yet… many of these farmers ended last year frustrated and disappointed. They felt let down, undermined, undervalued, and peripheral to the Labour government’s missions.

Those of us at Oxford know all too well that sustainable food and farming is at the heart of national renewal and a more prosperous, vibrant and resilient country.

Turns out, many UK citizens think so too.

For the last two years we’ve been talking to people in citizens assemblies across the UK about what we really want from food. The results have been startlingly consistent: more consistent, says More in Common, than for any policy area other than the National Health Service.  People really care about food.

Across all demographics, in all types of communities, in all regions of the country, the overwhelming majority of people want greener, healthier, fairer food and farming. 

By ‘greener’, they mean food produced in harmony with nature, minimal climate impacts, and much less polluting waste.

By ‘healthier’, they mean much more whole, fresh, minimally processed food, a rich variety of fruit and veg, nuts, pulses, grains, and sustainable meat and dairy. They want to end the proliferation of ultra processed products and junk food.

But what do people mean by ‘fairer’? 

On the face of it, as Henry Dimbleby and others have pointed out, food is cheaper, more abundant, more available than ever in our history. But scratch the surface and a more complicated story is revealed. And people are pretty shocked when they find out more about how the food system works.

Despite all the different brands on the shelves, citizens are surprised to learn how a mere handful of companies control what is farmed and what we eat. They are shocked to find out how little farmers and growers earn from the price of food, and how around 40% of farmers earn less than the living wage. They are astonished by twee ‘fake farm’ marketing by retailers, and astounded to discover how retailers treat real farmers through aggressive contracting, as Riverford’s Get Fair about Farming campaign has brought to light.

While big food businesses profit, their supply chains are staffed by precarious, low-paid workers. As Share Action says, “Despite the recognition at a policy-level, very few companies supplying to retailers can demonstrate that they are paying living wages in their supply chains.”

The very idea of cheap food is an illusion. The Food Foundation has laid out in great detail how health food is not easily available to everyone, everywhere.  Their analysis reveals just how difficult it is for low-income households to afford a healthy diet, particularly those with children. Tim Jackson’s report for FFCC, The False Economy of Big Food, estimated the staggering hidden costs of this dysfunctional food system, from treating dietary-related ill-health to lost productivity. The £268bn annual bill dwarfs the Treasury’s infamous £22bn black hole. The costs falling on the environment are similarly shocking. The globalisation of agriculture contributes to deforestation and desertification, from the soy in animal feeds to the palm oil present in so many everyday products.

It's not only citizens in The Food Conversation who are frustrated. Research from youth movement Biteback2030 reveals how young people are angry that their public spaces are flooded with unhealthy fast food outlets. They are yet more angry that big food is also damaging planetary health, compromising their entire future.

While people can mean different things by the notion of fairness, there is an accumulating weight of evidence about what a fair food system would look like – fair for farmers and growers, fair for citizens in urban and rural communities alike. This growing consensus about what people care about, and what they want government to do, should be helpful for a government considering how to spend its resources – and its attention – on the things that will make the country thrive in the long term.

We welcome the programme of policies that the Secretary of State trailered late last year: a comprehensive and inclusive food strategy; a roadmap for a farming transition to 2050; and a land use framework that informs better decisions about land.

For those plans to be as transformative as he wants, they must be rooted in a principle of fairness. In setting a course for a greener, healthier, fairer food and farming future, Steve Reed should keep five things in mind.

Five Rules for Fairer Food 

1. Keep citizens’ interests front and centre in policy discussions, and curtail the influence of ‘big food’ businesses and lobbyists
2. Ground joined-up policies across food, health, environment, planning, industrial strategy and prosperity in the principle that healthy food is a human right 
3. Ensure public funding supports the farmers doing the right things, investing their time, energy and money producing healthy food sustainably and in harmony with nature
4. Make ‘true costs’ more visible, requiring businesses to report their public impacts, and regulate effectively those that pass off the real costs to the public purse
5. Invest most in local and community food enterprise, which is currently losing out in a system that benefits globalised, consolidated businesses, but where there is so much community and public benefit