Net Gain or Net Drain? is a new report authored by Dolly van Tulleken and Hannah Haggie, with additional research by Chris Thoung, Chief Economist of Cambridge Econometrics. Additional contributions from Prof Tim Jackson, Tony Greenham, Rowan Conway and Ben Wood.

A common claim from big food companies is that they contribute to the economy: through jobs, investment and growth. But is this the full picture?

This new and significant piece of work starts the process of investigating the real costs and benefits of the businesses that dominate our food system.

It builds on FFCC’s work on The Food Conversation over the last few years and proposes a new value framework and sets out to identify a creative, impactful and feasible way to assess the performance of the whole UK agri-food system, its constituent sectors, and the contributions of the most dominant corporations within it.