The Institute for Sustainable Food Conference

Henry Dimbleby

Henry Dimbleby was given the role of lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in March 2018. In June 2019 the Environment Secretary appointed Henry Dimbleby to lead the National Food
Strategy. Henry Dimbleby co-founded the Leon restaurant chain. He was a co-founder of the Sustainable Restaurant Association and co-authored The School Food Plan (2013), which set out actions to transform what children eat in schools and how they learn about food.

Flora Hetherington

Flora is a senior manager in UKRI’s Global Food Security Programme, a UK cross-government programme on food security research. She currently manages the Transforming UK Food Systems SPF Programme, which aims to fundamentally transform the UK food system by placing healthy people and a healthy natural environment at its centre. Addressing questions around what we should eat, produce and manufacture and what we should import, taking into account the complex interactions between health, environment and socioeconomic factors. Previous to this role Flora was an N8 AgriFood Knowledge Exchange Fellow at Durham University and she has a research background in plant developmental biology, focussing on how plants respond to nutrient deficiency in the soil.

Healthy People in Healthy Environments

Our societies and environments are in a food crisis. In responding to urgent issues such as malnutrition, ecological degradation, or food poverty we may all too easily lose sight of the big picture. The various demands of a sustainable and healthy food system must be balanced to ensure research does not simply reinforce existing inequalities. Reflecting on the challenge of creating such research, in this session our speakers and panellists engage with the following provocation:

How can we embed justice in agri-food research?

Michelle Patel

Michelle Patel is the Head of Social Science and Strategic Insight at the Food Standards Agency. With nearly twenty years in Government and a background in communications she remains an endlessly curious scholar of public perception. With a deep interest in how citizens can influence policy making she is fortunate to lead a fine team of researchers and to have access to leading experts and a full range of social science tools to understand how and why people do what they do when it comes to food.

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Pursuit of Sustainable Food

Change comes in many forms: the complex timeline of policy change, the insidious creep of climatic disturbance, or the sudden shock of a pandemic. As food systems and their contexts change, what can we learn from history in shaping better food futures, and what accepted wisdoms need debunking? What adaptations are required to ensure food sustainability and security? In this session our speakers and panellists engage with the following provocation:

What can we learn from change events to facilitate positive transformation?

Professor Tim Lang

Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy since 2002. He founded the Centre in 1994. After a PhD in social psychology at Leeds University, he became a hill farmer in the 1970s in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire which shifted his attention to food policy, where it has been ever since. For years, he's engaged in academic and public research and debate about its direction, locally to globally. His abiding interest is how policy addresses the mixed challenge of being food for the environment, health, social justice, and citizens.

Emerging Food Landscapes

Session outline: what is the future of and tensions associated with the use of technology in the future of farming under a changing climate? What are the emerging tensions around different innovations? How may the changing technologies and practices impact on the future of farming landscapes and livelihoods? In this session our speakers and panellists engage with the following provocation:

What is the future of agricultural landscapes?

Sue Pritchard

Sue is the Chief Executive of Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, and is focused on leading the organisation in its mission to bring people together to find radical and practical ways to transform our food system and improve our climate, nature, health and economy. Sue brings extensive experience working with leaders in businesses, governments and enterprises, blending the academic and the practical for sustainable systems change.