On Monday 14th December representatives from governments around the world will meet to launch the Glasgow Declaration on Food and Climate. This initiative, hosted by Nourish Scotland and the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, aims to put food at the heart of the climate
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The return of the Westminster Agriculture Bill to the Commons in the next few days is a pivotal moment – for Brexit, for Scotland and in many ways for democracy. The latest Which? Poll out today shows 94% of people want to maintain high food standards and 77%
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It’s natural to put ‘food’ into the search box and see what this 135 page document says. But that would miss some of the most important messages. First, of course, the incorporation into Scots law of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This has
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The UK Government is currently consulting through a White Paper on how the UK internal market should operate after Brexit. Like much of the conversation about Brexit, it’s a political tussle pretending to be about economics. Devolution gives the Scottish Parliament and Government powers to legislate on
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At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic our food supply chains were forced to flex beyond what many thought possible, and whilst they were temporarily disrupted during the pandemic, exacerbated by media-fed anxiety about shortages, food continued to flow. Although this shows a certain robustness and ability
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The boss of Unilever wrote the foreword, and yet some sections of yesterday’s World Economic Forum report on ‘The Future of Nature and Business’ could have been written by Nourish: “COVID-19 is a stark reminder of how ignoring biophysical risks can have catastrophic health and economic impacts
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This week’s House of Lords Select Committee report is in many ways familiar reading. The UK’s food system results in shocking inequalities in access to good food especially in the context of COVID, an epidemic of chronic disease, and widespread environmental damage. What’s to be done? The
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Brexit was never going to be good for food. The EU, for all its faults, has been progressive on food safety and labelling, on safeguarding local food traditions, on environmental protection, on GM regulation and on animal welfare. The Common Agricultural Policy has been stubbornly misdirected towards
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Thousands of people have died, and thousands more are bereaved. Jobs are lost, businesses destroyed, hopes and plans in tatters. But it could have been even worse. What if the shops had actually run out of food, not just delivery slots? They didn’t. The massive stocking up,
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The recent images of empty supermarket shelves are an iconic reminder that running out of food is a really scary prospect. It’s hard to not be affected by this anxiety, even if at the rational level we know there is now – as there has been for
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