If you’re never heard of it, Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival is an annual event aimed at promoting and discussing regenerative farming methods, land use, nature and the food system. The festival is now in its eighth year, and took place last week on the 26th and 27th June, in Hertfordshire. It involves a two day line-up of panel discussions, presentations and field walks, as well as becoming a bit of a party in the evenings, although I sadly missed that this year!
I had the best couple of days, and would highly recommend you look up some of the sessions once they go up on the Groundswell YouTube channel.
To give you flavour of it, here are some of my favourite session titles:
“In the First 100 Days of a New Government, What Needs to Happen to Support Regenerative, Nature Friendly Farming?”
“Andy Cato & Henry Dimbleby; Transforming the Food Landscape at Scale, Can it be Done?”
“Home-Grown: How Can UK Horticulture Flourish in the Future?”
“Heritage Grains: What Are They & Why Grow Them?”
I returned from Groundswell full of hope and enthusiasm…there are so many bright and motivated people working on food and farming issues, and there really does seem to be consensus on what needs to change.
…But as I returned to normal life at the end of last week and over the weekend, I have to admit it has sunk in a bit that there is a LONG way to go, and some really deep, systemic issues which are hampering change.
Most of all, I am left with the uncomfortable conclusion that we simply aren’t paying enough for our food, and coupled with this, that neither government nor consumers value food and farming highly enough. While the organisations represented at Groundswell push for this to change, I can’t help feeling that progress to put food and farming on a sustainable footing is going to be grindingly slow.
“No such thing as cheap food”
One of the themes that came up a lot at Groundswell is the idea that “there’s no such thing as cheap food” i.e. if the shelf-prices are low, it is only because costs are accruing elsewhere. You can think about this in financial terms, such as the cost to the NHS of poor diets, the costs of mitigating environmental damage such as flooding (made worse by degraded soils), and the cost of supporting farmers struggling with their mental health, or who retire having had no chance to build up savings or a decent pension.
But you can also just think about it simply in terms of environmental costs – if food can cost so little, it is because it is being paid for in part by the environment, which is sinking deeper and deeper into the red.
The idea that there is no such thing as cheap food is a powerful one to keep in mind, because it forces us to think about all the externalities of the modern food system.
Unsurprisingly, the consensus at Groundswell seemed to be that we need to pay more for our food - so that farmers can be properly compensated, and to fund more sustainable production.
Multiple speakers I heard pointed out that the share of income spent on food in the UK has fallen dramatically in the last 50 years, and is now as low as 8.5% (depending on what exactly you include). This has of course been a huge economic boon to the country, freeing up income for all sorts of other things, and I in no way envisage a world in which 30% of income is spent on food again, as it was in the 1950s, BUT I do think some upwards adjustment is now needed. In Japan they spend 16%, Italy 15%, France 14% and the Netherlands 12% of income on food.
The response, quite rightly, is to point out that already 7% of people in the UK live in food insecure households. This is a shocking problem for the UK to have in 2024. BUT it is possible to believe simultaneously that food is too cheap, AND that more must be done to make sure everyone can access a healthy, nutritionally complete diet. Food insecurity is a multifaceted issue; “there is food insecurity, ergo food is too expensive” is an oversimplification, and one which ignores the realities of the position our food system is now in.
If I’m being cynical, I would say that as much as governments get criticised for food prices, it is actually quite a good issue to have people worried about. Government can blame the supermarkets, and - at least historically - there have been levers in the system that can be pulled to achieve pretty quick results: farmers can be squeezed, supply from countries with cheaper labour or lower regulation can be increased, food can be reformulated with cheaper ingredients, and if really pushed, supermarket profit margins can be cut, as they have been over the past decade.
But squeezing food prices isn’t the only way to alleviate food insecurity.
Consider this: while share of income spent on food has fallen sharply since the 1950s, the share spent on housing has doubled, from 9% to around 17%. In other words, around half of the savings households have benefitted from on food over the last 50 years, has just been redirected to housing – another essential expenditure. Why don’t we think of food insecurity as a housing-cost problem, or an energy-cost problem, or a wages or benefits problem? Improvements in any of these would also help alleviate food insecurity, any perhaps even make it possible to allow food prices to better reflect the true costs of production.
In truth I think governments have found it easier, quicker, and less controversial to squeeze food than tackle other deep-rooted societal and economic issues.
The commoditisation of food
Linked to price sensitivity around food, and also apparent in the discussion at Groundswell, is the idea that food is no longer appropriately valued as part of UK culture (and perhaps has never really been compared to countries with strong food cultures around the world). Without the cultural significance of cooking and eating together as a key aspect of leisure time, a source of joy, and a way of marking significant events, the complexity of our food choices has reduced: to convenience and primarily, price.
This consistently emerges from consumer research, which shows that even though consumers express a desire to (for example) eat more British-produced food, in the end they tend to select mainly on price. For some people this is of course a financial necessity, but for many people it isn’t – it is at least in part a decision about the value of food versus other goods and services. This is reflected in the fact that even in higher income brackets, price and convenience emerge as the top factors determining choice of supermarket.
Various speakers at Groundswell pointed out that we have become very detached from where and how our food has been produced, something which feeds into the supremacy of pricing. I think this is probably true - have you ever thought about the agricultural origin of a bag of Doritos? Do you even know what plant(s) you would be looking for, or where they grow? What about for a can of baked beans, or a bag of almonds? And if you don’t know these things, how can you begin to ask more complicated questions about their value and their impact?
I am not saying that we need to be able to trace every grain of rice to its source (although why not? Blockchain, QR codes etc. could make this a reality), but I would probably agree that we have taken our eye off the ball with this and moved too far in the direction of not knowing the hows and wheres – and sometimes even the what - of the food we’re buying. It makes us very vulnerable to manipulation, and has already led us into excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods, which have long term effects on our health and wellbeing, and create the kinds of “down the line” costs I was talking about above.
Consumer behaviour is going to be absolutely vital to driving change in the food system, and so we desperately need to generate greater understanding, and activate some additional choice criteria. The participants at Groundswell envisage a world in which consumers are empowered to select food based - yes, on price, but also on nutritional density (today’s industrially produced crops contain fewer nutrients than they did historically), on localness, on human rights and fair pricing, on animal welfare and, of course, on environmental impact.
It is a bold dream. And as I said at the top, there is a long way to go.
Very insightful, and a topic that is dear to my own heart. In these inflationary times I have cut our budget for food spending, but we are eating better than we have in years. By going back to skills I have cultivated since childhood I switched back to making essentially all our food from scratch. I can buy organic pasta, organic beans, choose New Zealand grown oats, flour, etc and still save more money than we used to spend, even before inflation started biting. Lots of eating in season, preserving, and eating what grows right here. Plus I grow a massive vegetable garden (and worked years in orchard horitculture), so I certainly understand the work that goes into growing! This is all only possible because I am not currently working full-time, which is a privilege. You are absolutely right that it is not a case of food affordability but the high costs in other areas, plus our squeezed lives leaving no time and energy to feed ourselves delicious and nourishing food. I do look at all the savings I've been able to achieve by NOT working full-time, it amounts to at least 12 hours of my wage per week (savings on food because I can grow/preserve/cook it, savings on fuel, savings on car maintenance, savings on buying work clothes and shoes so often...) so any extra 'job' work I might consider has to be looked at from that context.
Newly subscribed. To completely ignore the thrust of your article, what is the vibe of the festival like? Our family go to Timber Festival every year but we are falling out of love with it. Is there a family vibe at all - storytelling, performances etc? Timber has enough interesting sustainability talks to keep me interested but also plenty for the kids (both under 10). Is there anything like that at Groundswell?