Food and Farming come to Manchester and Marie the French Foodie had her dreams come true.

Marie Charles, our agri research manager and French foodie got her prayers answered as the team headed to mancheter for a double act of The Agri-Food Network Big Tent and Lunch! North.

She had a long train journey to reflect on what she had learned...

On my three-hour train journey back home last night, I had the time to reflect on the amazing AFN Network+ Big Tent 🎪 I attended over two days in Manchester. I loved every bit of it, and it was also great to spend it with the team; Claire Otridge, Lucy Jellicoe and Claire Bennett-Madge!

I had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop at the end of the conference on conservation agriculture and opportunities to use it as a tool to improve the nutritional quality of the food we grow in this country. We had a lot of great discussion points!

The key takeaways I take from those two days 👇🏻 

💭Science and policy must work together - interdisciplinary approaches will support achieving net zero goals sustainably. Food policy takes place at different levels and doesn’t solely rely on Defra but also on local authorities and local enterprises partnerships amongst others. Reach out to those stakeholders if you want to make things happen locally.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏽 Producing healthy local food is a target but we need to create a market for it to ensure it reaches the community - a great example is the work being done by the Falkland Centre for Food Sustainability in developing a sustainable food community hub, supporting farmers and connecting local communities with healthy locally produced food.

🍽 Food deserts and food poverty are a sad reality in this country - thank you to Dominic Watters for being such a fantastic advocate of those challenges that are too many times brushed under the carpet and for all the work he is doing to address them - We must have those less privileged communities in mind when designing frameworks for a more sustainable food system.

🧬 Technology and innovation, including genetics, weren't spoken about as much in this conference but I had a fabulous catch up with Caeli Richardson. Key takeaway from our conversation - Don’t let personal misconceptions take over scientific facts - if you don’t understand something, ask questions, don’t assume you know and spread misinformation! (I.e. the Boaver debate …) All in all, we have to acknowledge that with food production and agriculture comes many other goals to balance - water resilience, nutritious food production, sustainable land use, supporting biodiversity etc.

This is such an exciting time for our industry and I feel inspired to have shared two days with some incredible people sharing their knowledge and experiences ✨