2025 Future Food
How do we produce delicious, healthy food for everyone and save the planet?
Challenge Overview
Have you noticed how expensive food has become? We’re in the middle of a global food crisis, driven by the combined effects of war, climate extremes and energy costs. In the UK, farmers have been hit by some of the hottest, driest summer in decades, severely impacting crops and livestock. Use of food banks has doubled in the past five years, while rates of obesity and diabetes are soaring. Agriculture has the biggest impact on global ecosystems of any human activity, while poor diet is now the leading cause of early death across the world.
Food is a truly interdisciplinary Grand Challenge, combining social, cultural, economic, political and scientific issues. In some ways the solution is simple. We know where we need to go. Everyone has a right to healthy, sustainable, delicious food which doesn’t harm the environment. We can get there if we switch to a largely plant-based diet. But making this shift will need innovative thinking and strong leadership. Future Food is your opportunity to get to grips with this most important of Grand Challenges. This year, we plan to repeat our successful field trips to a farm and community food project (read more below) after hearing from a panel of external experts who are shaping food policy locally and nationally.
In 2023, we took Future Food out of the classroom and into the Field, to visit a farm or a community-based food project (students chose one of these field trips). We visited Shillingford, the largest local organic fruit and vegetable farm in the region, to engage in hands-on farming activities, and intellectually stimulating walks and talks with the growers. We learnt first-hand about the challenges facing sustainable agriculture and engaged in discussions about food sovereignty, food security, climate justice, gender equality and access to land. We discussed the pros and cons of different diets, and investigated what conventional agriculture could learn from organic and regenerative agriculture practice.
Our other field trip visited St. Sidwell’s Community Centre in Exeter, to learn about (and enjoy) its community café, bakery, cookery school and vegetable garden. We learnt about the role of local food initiatives like this in increasing access to healthy, sustainable food and in educating and inspiring the local community. Students were not required to select a specific enquiry group on this Challenge but could choose to focus on diets and health, the impact of food production, threats to food security or the politics and economics of the food system when developing their own projects.
To prepare for Grand Challenges week, sign up for our fantastic and FREE online course on Future Food.
This course will take you through all the biggest and most important questions in understanding the Food System, what’s wrong with it and how to fix it.
This challenge will run on Streatham Campus.
Enquiry Groups:
This enquiry group will consider the food choices people make and the implications these choices have for health and the environment. What should our priorities be for dietary change for improved health and sustainability (Eat more plants? Organic? Less processed?) and how can we encourage or persuade people to change? Students will look at what drives food choices at the individual and societal level and how our food environment primes us to make certain choices. Students may also consider how we could try to harness the power of marketing, product promotions and other environmental nudges to try and change people’s food choices for the better.
Food is a global issue. The UK imports 40% of its food and that proportion is rising. Agriculture and land use change are responsible for one quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, alongside serious impacts on biodiversity loss and air and water pollution. This enquiry group will investigate the implications of major patterns and trends in global food production. Topics could include how our major sources of food (crops, fisheries, livestock) are produced and the environmental impact this has, or whether you can eat fish and meat sustainably and what the alternatives are.
One in nine people around the world go hungry every day, and with the global population continuing to increase, food security is a growing concern at home and abroad. Students in this enquiry group will look at major threats to food security which may include: climate change, conflict, soil erosion, and the pathogens that attack our crops. Another area of focus may include ‘climate-smart agriculture’ and looking at the impact of recent extreme weather on food production. Students may also consider the future of food production: will it be organic, regenerative, genetically modified, or use novel methods like precision fermentation (similar to Quorn production)?
This enquiry group will look at issues such as the importance of farm size in driving the economics of agriculture, and what farm size means for those who produce our food. We’ll discuss how governments and organizations like the European Union and World Trade Organizations affect food prices and what is grown around the world, and whether government policies can help us to protect important ecosystem services. Students might also consider ‘sustainable intensification’ and think about what the future food system could look like to benefit our health, environment, and society.
The community has become a site where action is taking place to tackle issues relating to sustainable food, access to food, food policies and programmes etc. People are coordinating action within communities on specific projects on these topics, whilst others are part of national and translocal networks of action where they are trying to drive action at both local and national scales. An example of this is The Sustainable Food Places networks in the UK, and Milan Urban Food Policy Pact internationally (MUFPP). Groups might like to explore what action is going on in their communities. They may want to map that action, explore which type of actors are usually involved or perhaps try and determine to what extent these actions are creating change?
