The Path to Zero Hunger: to make a change we must act collaboratively
16 October 2024. On World Food Day, the Lord Mayor and City Harvest invited experts spanning the UK food & non-profit sectors to address how the world can work to end hunger. Achieving SDG 2 ‘Zero Hunger’ means to ensure better access to nutritious, sustainable food and sufficient food all year round.
City Harvest food charity CEO, Sarah Calcutt, hosted a panel of 10 speakers who all prepared a 4-minute speech in their area before launching into a Q&A session amongst the panel and audience.
City Harvest’s World Food Day Panel at Mansion House
Professor Tim Lang
Prof Tim Lang is Emeritus professor of food policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy since 2002.
Key Points:
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We have enough food – it just needs to be better distributed.
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Change engine: we have a lot fo these at community level but there must be a political answer for systemic change. We do not have a coherent political response.
Anna Taylor
Anna Taylor is the CEO of The Food Foundation, a charity on a mission to change food policy and business practice to ensure everyone, across our nation, can afford and access a healthy diet.
Key Points:
- We’ve seen a dramatic increase in UK food insecurity: 7.2 million adults, 2.7 million children are currently food insecure (and 18& of households with children)
- Rising child obesity and stunted growth on the rise due to poor nutrition. Life expectancy has dropped by a year in the last decade.
- Incomes need to support a healthy diet. The cost of living has overtaken wage growth.
- Free school meals & healthy start: too restrictive.
- Progress: food businesses are making it easier for people to eat well for less. We need to see this at scale.
Jonny Oates
Lord Jonny Oates has had a political career with a specific interest in international development and climate change. He is now CEO of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger.
Key Points:
- When people move to find food, tension rises.
- Conflict and hunger are inextricably linked and create a vicious circle for the most vulnerable in our society.
- The geopolitical consequences of climate change and exacerbated hunger are undeniable.
- Moral accountability and less indifference needed.
Renee Marais
Renee Marais is the current Managing Director of Rabobank International.
Key Points:
- Rabobank began as a farming cooperative and maintains its cooperative roots and values.
- Cooperative: a collective that means it’s easier to train people & engage with global markets.
- Role of coops spreading technology into emerging markets and being a force for good: promoting sustainable food business globally.
Judith Batchelar
Judith Batchelar OBE is Co-Chair HA Commission into the Future of Food Banks, and director at Food Matters International.
Key Points:
- How can we help people to make healthier choices?
- Trilemma – market perspective. We don’t pay enough for food. We’re not remunerating suppliers adequately and are not compensating the environmental costs on planet.
- Money we spend on promoting unhealthy food should be better spent.
- How policies are implemented on the ground in the space where they matter. Priority Places for Food Index. Unique challenges of each community.
- Let’s invest in making healthy food more affordable – faster & at scale.
Karen Betts
Karen Betts is the CEO of the Food and Drink Federation.
Key Points:
- Intersector collaborations are needed: governments, businesses and NGOs.
- There’s a huge need to invest in British Farming.
- Better surplus distribution e.g. fridges and freezers from the Coronation Food Project.
- Food waste contributes massively to climate change.
Professor Ken Sloan
Professor Ken Sloan isthe Vice-Chancellor and CEO of Harper Adams University, the leading specialist university in the UK that focuses on food production and technology.
Key Points:
- Regenerative Farming in UK – leading
- If this doesn’t translate into nutrition, we continue to have social inequity.
- UN/FAO: Design the system to ensure young people have basic access to the right food.
- Uk: better use of social prescribing – empower GPs to have authority. Enforce notion of basic nutritional intake – Labour Govt.
Tristan Fischer
Tristan Fischer is CEO of Fischer Farms, one of the world’s largest vertical farming businesses.
- Food preservation and conservation is key to preventing food waste.
- Bernard Matthew’s: crossover between food and energy.
- Demand increase – population growth, growing global middle class (4 billion worldwide in 2020) – increased strain on planet.
- The amount of good land is decreasing due to urbanisation.
- 25% of world’s food relies on aquifers: a epleting resource – will become poisonous due to over-exploitation.
- Water scarcity is a recipe for future conflict.
- Vertical farming – more efficient – a solution.
Kate Cooper
Kate Cooper is the director of the Birmingham Food Council.
Key Points:
- 1.8 billion people live with absolute water scarcity – many on the move.
- We must invest in Agritech.
- We can choose in the next 10 years to scaffold collective resilience.
- Control big corporations – make them subject to a specific fiscal regime to help curb environmental and social exploitation.
- We can choose to prioritise the health of mothers (young and middle-aged women) – practically.
- The most important people to focus on are young and middle-aged women in resource-stressed parts of the world. The future of our food system depends on this.
Robert Lawson
Robert Lawson is Managing Director at Food Strategy Associates.
- Embracing the brilliance of packaging rather than demonising it could help to reduce food waste. The right kind of plastic packaging could do more good than harm compared to alternatives.
- There are better ways to recycle packaging – we must action them.
- Why is there a disparity in recycling bins the UK?
- For every 100 cows – 10 are wasted because of inadequate packing. Inadequate packaging = food waste.
- With better packaging, we can make healthy food more affordable.
- Retailers should stop focusing on plastic reduction.
NEW: City Harvest Food Report
Climate Change and Trade Challenges are majorly impacting the UK food industry, and the island’s ability to be self-sufficient. Learn more about the challenges the food industry faces, as well as the solutions that can be provided to reach a more sustainable food system.
