A billion people living in hunger. Food sector work poorly paid and dangerous. Farmers and food producers struggling for their livelihoods. Massive diet-related health inequalities, at home and around the world. The food system is riddled with unfairness – so what are the prospects for social justice in a time of public spending cuts, rising unemployment, and anxieties over climate change? What will be the impact of emerging UK government policy such as the
Healthy Lives, Healthy People White Paper; the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board; and the establishment of a Groceries Code Adjudicator?
The Food Ethics Council and
nef (the new economics foundation) invite you to join us in debating these questions at our conference,
Food Justice – for a fair deal in hard times. The event will bring together politicians, businesses, campaigners, civil servants and academics to forge ways to a fairer food system. It will build on the Food Ethics Council report
Food Justice, and the
nef report
An Inconvenient Sandwich. The conference is possible thanks to support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Esm
ée Fairbairn Foundation. We are charging a small fee to contribute to meeting the costs of the event.
Confirmed contributors include:
- Helen Browning OBE, incoming Director of the Soil Association and Chair of the Food and Fairness Inquiry
- Sheila Dillon, Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme – who will chair the conference
- Felicity Lawrence, journalist and author of Not on the Label and Eat your Heart Out
- Melanie Leech, Chief Executive of the Food and Drink Federation
Further details of the conference will be available later this month, and places are expected to fill up quickly. Please book your place using the ticket options on the left. You are very welcome to attend the full conference. However, aware of the demands on your time, we have designed the programme so that the morning and afternoon can be attended as ‘standalone’ events.
9:15-9:45 - Registration
9:45-1:00 - Morning session
Two keynote speakers, followed by a Question Time-style panel discussion. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions, answers and discussion involving all attendees.
1:00-2:00 - Lunch
All participants are welcome to lunch. Please be sure to let us know by selecting the appropiate lunch option when booking.
2:00-4:00 - Afternoon session
Six parallel roundtable seminars on key issues of fairness in the food sector. Themes and brief descriptions are set out below. These seminars will focus on finding solutions – numbers will be capped to ensure constructive and coherent discussion, and all participants will be expected to contribute on the basis of their expertise and experience of issue at hand. Please sign up for the seminar where you can be the most active.
4:00-4:30 - Refreshments
Seminar themes
Working in the UK food sector
The Agricultural Wages Board is being abolished, and food businesses are still hugely dependent upon migrant workers because of low pay, poor conditions and limited career prospects. How can we make the food sector a safe and attractive option for job-seekers across the skills spectrum, and make the best of the UK’s biggest manufacturing industry?
Healthy and sustainable diets: is ‘nudging’ fair?
Even before the recession, one in five low-income families regularly skipped meals to make ends meet. With the government pinning its hopes on ‘nudging’ people towards healthier lifestyles, what are the prospects for healthier, more sustainable eating?
An inconvenient sandwich
In the café and takeaway sector, the convenient, ready-to-eat foods we increasingly depend on often come at the cost of low wages, precarious working conditions, scant regard for environmental or animal welfare issues, and a reliance on cheap ingredients that have little nutritional value. How can we tackle the 'throwaway economics' of takeaway food, which are holding down standards, cloning our diets and squeezing independent traders out of business?
Finance for food security
Food price volatility has exposed the trade in food commodities to growing public scrutiny. The debate raging over the importance of speculation in driving the price swings has raised more fundamental questions about the effectiveness of financial markets in channelling agricultural investment where it will best tackle food insecurity. What forms of public and private investment work best for the world’s poor people?
CAP reform: market management and dumping
The European Commission’s mooted reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy place increased weight on influencing food consumption and promoting public health. Would doing this at any scale mean managing food prices? And could CAP do so, and safeguard rural livelihoods in Europe, without dumping cheap produce on world markets and undermining food security and sovereignty in poorer countries?
Fair access to land
One consequence of the 2008 food crisis was the acquisition of land by cash-rich, water-poor countries to enhance their own food security. These headline deals often mask an even greater pressure on agricultural land – commercial acquisitions by international businesses and land grabs by national elites. What can be done to improve the security of the 500 million small-scale farmers whose land rights are not legally protected or recognised?