#LPC25: Get real about growth Book your spot for the Labour Party Conference Panel Event here: invtdu.to/_73z3k

🌿FFCC is at Abergavenny Food Festival this weekend. Join us for two key events on Wales's food future: 🎟️'Can Wales Lead The Way?': www.abergavennyfoodfestival.com/conference-a... 🎟️BBC Food Programme: Cymru on the Future of Food: www.abergavennyfoodfestival.com/event/bbc-ev...

🎤Presented by Sheila Dillon, this panel brings together @suepritch.bsky.social with food writer @becalp.bsky.social, food historian @carwyngraves.bsky.social and @susfoodtrust.bsky.social's Patrick Holden to ask: what makes Wales’s food story so unique, and what it could teach the rest of the UK?

With the ID debate back on the agenda, it’s worth a closer look at who is benefiting from undocumented work. The food delivery firms, the nail bars, the hand car wash outlets… Who makes money from those businesses; who is buying the cheap products? theconversation.com/im-always-de...

This is what leadership looks like. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Don’t anybody try and tell me we can’t trust 16 year olds with the vote.

Garden harvest. More corn to pick. Many more plums and damsons - which will need a ladder. Bumper pear crop in a couple of weeks. Well done, garden!

This is the kind of thing Welsh farmers get for free or at greatly subsidized rates via #FarmingConnect (side benefit - marveling at the What3Words choices for the farm visits 😂)

Love this innovation! Healthy street food, easily available everywhere! @ucl.ac.uk on.ft.com/45DuU8d Introducing Larder, the kitchen you can carry on a Lime Bike

🌽 🍽️ We’re bringing big ideas and bold questions to Abergavenny Food Festival this year with a conference exploring: “A Fairer Food Future: Can Wales Lead the Way?” 🗓️ Friday 19 September | 10am - 4pm 📍 Abergavenny Food Festival Conference www.abergavennyfoodfestival.com/conference-a...

Devastating news about the brilliant Sir David Nabarro. I have been so grateful for his wisdom, generosity and grace these last few years. Such a terrible loss.

If a Wealth Tax is too complicated, let’s talk about tax rates. Wikipedia tells me this. UK highest rate 47% (incl NI). Switz 50% Spain 52% Portugal 56% Nethds 49% France 65% Finland 53% Denmark 52% Canada 58% Belgium 60% Austria 55%. Tax wealth. www.thetimes.com/article/486b...

Here’s a wild idea for you, junk food companies, that’ll save you years and £millions in R&D, product testing and marketing! *Just don’t make bad things!* You’re welcome. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

24% of plastic waste with an identifiable brand came from just five companies: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, and Altria. #PollutersMustPay

“these thousands of individual horror stories were not the result of some kind of antagonist-free natural disaster. They happened because there were perpetrators.” This travesty is at the heart of so many scandals of our neoliberal times - water, housing, food www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Experts say a better system would start upstream, controlling what enters treatment plants. New EU rules will require pharmaceutical and personal care product makers to pay 80% of waste treatment costs, but the UK has no such mechanism.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

📝 Blog: Whose farming future is it anyway? Dr Charlie Taverner asks whether, amid a flurry of roadmaps, strategies & visions, have decision-makers spent enough time talking to people who these policies will affect? And will these policies help farmers live better lives? ffcc.co.uk/conversation...

🔦 As #LondonClimateWeek spotlights the urgent challenges - and opportunities - of transforming food, a new paper from @planeatryalliance.bsky.social offers 10 actionable insights on how to accelerate the transition to making healthy, sustainable diets the norm.

SO looking forward to my annual Groundswell fix! Time with my people - curious, innovative, practical, collaborative farmers, growers, campaigners and businesses. Come say hello!

“Boys and toys.” So many infrastructure projects would make a difference to everyday lives - affordable housing, local transport schemes, water storage, renewable energy, capital investment in schools and hospitals - and yet £billions are wasted on toys for the boys www.thetimes.com/article/ab8f...

What I love about these folk, who’ve been working with us evaluating food policy proposals for a while now, is that - across all demographics - they appreciate that it can be complicated AND they want to help, to get to a healthier greener fairer food system for everyone.

“Why is our economy an unregulated wasteland of self-dealing, where theft is not an aberration but the very foundation of the world’s greatest fortunes?”GREAT question… www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

More like this please - evidence that cuts through the nonsense and gives us all the chance to live in safer healthier communities.

What a treat to listen to @hilarycottam.bsky.social talking to @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social at @uclpolicylab.bsky.social about her new book #TheWorkWeNeed. The radical help* we need right now to reimagine the work we want for the future we want. *see what I did there?! 😊

Good to see government is extending free school meals 👉 www.bbc.com/news/article... This is something citizens have consistently called for so that no child grows up hungry. Here's David, school governor & #TheFoodConversation participant, on the "heartbreaking" reality of children in poverty 👇

This is *great* news for children in England - alleviating child poverty, improving children’s health and educational outcomes (and getting closer to the universal free school meals policies in Wales, Scotland and London).

Just delighted to be joining the launch of the #WillowReview - helping SMEs become more productive, profitable and sustainable. So many ‘food systems’ businesses in the room!

Loved this wide ranging conversation with Derek Walker @futuregencymru.bsky.social

This is an excellent - and thought provoking for activists - listen from @alexpodyssey.bsky.social 👇🏼 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

Excellent investigative work here from @thesoilassociation.bsky.social proving what we all suspect. Big Food businesses can’t be trusted near policies intended to improve citizens health and wellbeing. www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

We’d be yellow if we were still covered by @eea.europa.eu. 1 Farmers & growers in the UK are starting to struggle with water shortages. 2 The foods we’d normally import are coming from drought-hit countries 3. On farm water storage should be a priority national infrastructure investment

The alternate views on the US trade deal are either - the UK lost because US tariffs are higher than January, or the UK did fine but gave up on the principles behind free trade. I don't agree on either count but they are debates worth having.

Excellent podcast here from @bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk. It will be a good primer for #FoodStrategy stakeholders. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...

Very good explainer here from Charlotte Smith in The Landscape Revolution. Critical question now is what can Defra do to reset farming policy? (Hint: there is no shortage of expert advice willing and able to help) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Great to join @alexisconran.bsky.social on #TimesRadio, discussing whether govt should tax the companies who make huge profits from selling UPFs, which - the evidence shows - are harming our health and the environment. Surprise: I said yes. ffcc.co.uk/publications...

I had an absolute blast meeting up with my food heroes. The Cookery School is truly amazing and Rosalind Rathouse an inspiration #sustainablelearning Look out for more about their fabulous work shortly!

Of all the good bits in @theobserveruk.bsky.social this is a favourite. How the BBC could let this brilliant woman go I do NOT know…

Yes. Yes I am. Good work @theguardian.com

If all this here isn’t a rock solid argument for 100% taxes on billionaires I don’t know what is…

Just say no.

Thrilled to get my hard copy of this brilliant book by the incomparable @proftimjackson.bsky.social Guess my favourite chapter…

And also: good job, Wisconsin 👊🏼

“Do not normalise this moment… make good trouble…” Hat tip, Cory Booker.

Ashamed to be a citizen of a country that arrests people for ‘dissent and protest’. Recalling that the slogan ‘Speaking Truth to Power’ originated with the Quakers.

#Anthropy - inspiring and provocative in equal measure. In the beautiful setting of The Eden Project I could post many pics. But this is possibly my favourite - Angela Rippon and Edwin Booth leading a conga in the Mediterranean biome.

Last Thursday, FFCC’s Northern Ireland team including our NI Director John Woods was delighted to welcome His Majesty The King @royalfamily.bsky.social in Co Derry/Londonderry – and tell him more about some of our initiatives to progress the regenerative farming agenda in the country.

Love this visualization. Along with a critical economic analysis of who’s actually benefiting from this food and land use system (ie big ag and big food corps) it’s clear. If we fix food properly, we can fix many global crises.

🥕 In our latest report ‘Paying the Price,’ Dr Charlie Taverner shows that decades of policy designed to cheapen food is coming at a huge cost to public health, the environment and the UK’s food resilience – with farmers and citizens losing out.

Not just a story of farming. Reliance on larger companies and the squeezing out of smaller ones is a huge largely ignored story of the modern economy. The loss of dynamic competition is probably part of the low growth story.

Excellent research from my @ffc-commission.bsky.social team reveals that the real problem for farmers is how farm incomes have been progressively squeezed over forty years thanks to the cheapening of food in a commodified, consolidated, financialised food system. www.theguardian.com/environment/...