What’s the problem?

Currently the supermarkets and agri-business control our food. The centralised and industrialised system they have developed has provided us with plentiful, cheap food but at enormous cost to the envirionment and communities.

If we looked at our current food system through the lens of energy and resource use rather than simply through yields or profit we would see that it is massively energy inefficient.

Our current food and farming system requires us to put in between 5 and 10 calories for every 1 we get out .  That means the energy we get out in the form of food is up to 10 times less than it has taken to grow it. And the way we put those 10 calories in is through fossil fuels – mainly oil and gas – in the form of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, in on-farm machinery and in the energy required to process that food and get it from the farm to our plates.

Our current food system also accounts for at least 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions and it’s dependence on cheap fossil fuels makes it extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in the supply and price of oil and gas.

Food distribution is based around long centralised supply chains which function best when supplied by large monocultural farms. This type of industrialised farming has polluted our soil and water and displaced or eradicated native wildlife.

On an individual basis we are increasingly disconnected from our food, where it comes from and the people that produce it. Most of us lack basic skills or understanding of growing, preparing and cooking food – all of which increases our dependency on a fragile food system.

It turns out that much of the food created by this system is not very good for our health – obesity and other diet-related health problems are affecting more and more of us. Not only is our current food system unsustainable, but it has turned us into a nation of passive consumers in a top-down system from which we expect unlimited ‘choice’ but over which we have little control.

>> Manifesto for feeding cities: what needs to be done