It's tempting to avoid the debate around what our society eats and how our food is produced and wasted. Yet there’s a huge opportunity to connect what we all eat to what really matters for nature as most of the food we eat comes from the land.
The evidence of harm is overwhelming - agriculture is the biggest driver of nature loss globally, and the State of Nature Report showed that also holds true here in the UK, where 70% of land is farmed largely to produce food. Uncertain seasons and extreme weather related to climate change is another driver of nature loss. Food also plays a part here, with 30% of our UK emissions coming from the food system. When you look at what farmers and growers are asked to produce by supply chains, it is dominated by crops for processed foods or for feeding animals that later end up in the food chain. A further 130,000 hectares are used to produce biofuel crops that are then burnt in cars, whilst 30% of all our food is thrown away.