UK Food Systems in 2050

The UK Food Systems in 2050: Trends, Roadmaps and Future Research Needs

Panel Discussion and Participatory Workshop
Date: Thursday 28th April 2022

Download the full programme

This event was jointly hosted by the STFC Food Network+ and YESI.

The panel talks and debates focused on:

What is a resilient and NZ+ food system in 2050?
Sector Specific Roadmaps – What are some of the trends & Future Research Needs (from production to consumption)?
What are the conflicts we need to manage in co-designing NZ+ Food Systems?
Are there any unintended consequences we need to plan for?
What are the kinds of business models and partnerships that would work for farmers, manufacturers, retailers and policy makers?
What is the ROI if the food systems start delivering environmental and health benefits?
Do we need to develop how we assess and measure NZ?

Workshop Details

The current UK food systems are responsible for around 35% of UK territorial emissions (WRAP 2021). Recent, legally binding Net Zero (NZ) targets for greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (2045 in Scotland), will truly test UK’s competence in fostering transformational change and ability to innovate in a sector that is biologically and behaviourally heterogeneous, and which also needs to meet other social and environmental objectives. Against this policy challenge, many organisations are independently adopting NZ targets and designing their own pathways, but not all of these are joined up or mapping the interdependencies, synergies and misalignments across the agri-food system, designing new equitable investment and business models or understanding the potential unintended consequences of siloed radical innovation across the system. Nevertheless, the growing interest in NZ targets represents an unparalleled opportunity for agri-food stakeholders to innovate and drive climate action, but these innovations and pathways need to have a multi-scale understanding: from systems to sector based, from field to regional and national scale. In this workshop, we bring together leading experts from academia and practise for discussing some of the big questions, the emerging trends, data and gaps to drive the future research on Net Zero+ Food Systems.

Watch the video of the event on the SFN+ YouTube channel.

Read the final report, following further feedback and consultation.