Introducing a Citizen Manifesto to Fix Food: Seizing the moment

From Sue Pritchard, Chief Exec at FFCC

“‘We can’t carry on just as we are,’ the Prime Minister says of the UK food system
in his introduction to the government’s new 20-year food and farming strategy published today. The strategy has been co-ordinated by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), but it integrates policy on food across every government department for the first time since the second world war.”

This is not an imagined quote from our hoped-for future, but from The Guardian in January 2010 and the PM quoted is the Rt Hon Gordon Brown. The 2010 election put paid to those ambitions. But the point is clear. Government has known for quite some time that food and farming need to change.

The analysis in that strategy almost exactly mirrors analysis now, in the volumes of research and reports published in the intervening 15 years. Meanwhile, things are getting worse. Diet-related ill health is rocketing, farmer incomes
are falling, food bank use continues to spiral, the climate and nature crises are already impacting food security and national resilience. From then to now, many expert and well-informed people have set out clear proposals that tackle these national critical issues.

Now, this government has a once in a generation chance to use its mandate to hit the ground running, to make real progress and deliver change in this Parliament.

And the great news is – they are backed wholeheartedly by the public.
For too long, government has been told that people don’t want things to change.

“Nobody wants a nanny state!”
“Businesses only make what people want to buy.”
“Most people just want cheap food...”

But is it true? Or are these all too familiar tropes simply lobbyist lines designed to undermine political will and confidence to lead change?

The Food Conversation set out to find out.

Over the last two years, in 12 assemblies and now in community led conversations all around the UK, FFCC has brought together a diverse and representative
group of people from all backgrounds, in a ‘gold standard’ process, to ask them: “So, what do we really want from food?”

They’ve talked about food and health, farming, climate and nature; the place of food in their lives and in their communities.

This is what they want government to do. This is their mandate to make it a government mission to fix food.

Sue Pritchard
Chief Executive at the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission