 Getting the most out of every ingredient. That's the mark of a maker. The KitchenAid Blender Collection. Welcome to this British Library food season double bill on this Saturday sponsored by KitchenAid. My name is Polly Russell and I'm a curator at the British Library and the curator and the founder of the British Library's food season. And this year I've had the real pleasure of working with Angela Clutton as the season's guest director. And as usual with the food season, what we wanted to do was to make sure that we had a whole host of events which were really diverse, really eclectic, but crucially really relevant. And in the context of COVID and what it's revealed about the fragility and the problems of the food season, today's double bill just could not be more relevant. We are starting with this fantastic panel. Now starting with this fantastic panel called Food Futures, Choices Facing Us Now with Tim Lang, Dee Woods and Sheila Dillon. And then going on this afternoon, a wonderful event called Beyond the Bank, Building, Culture and Community Through Food with Bristol Square Food Foundation, Migrateful, Community Unity in Leeds and Brixton People's Kitchens. Both totally relevant, completely important events. Now for today's event. If you want to ask questions, please do. There's a form at the bottom of your screens. Please submit questions. If you would like to purchase books by any of the panelists, those are also available on your screens and they've all written wonderful books, so I implore you to do so. And now though I want to introduce you to today's chair, Sheila Dillon. Many of you will know her as the presenter of BBC4's food program. Her programs have included so many, but included groundbreaking editions on BSE, The Rise of GM Food and so many more, many of which have helped move food issues from the margins to the mainstream in the media. She helped set up the BBC Food and Farming Awards and she has won so many awards herself, I can't name them, but perhaps she's best summed up by a city university accolade, which stated that she has changed the way that we think about food. Over to your chair, Sheila Dillon. Thank you very much, Polly. And it is, as you say, I mean, there couldn't be a better moment to have this debate and there couldn't be two better people to talk about food futures, the choice facing us now because the choices are really stark. Dee Woods is the founder of Granville Community Kitchen. She's the winner of BBC Food Awards Cook of the Year, that's for cooks who change their communities. She's a food and political activist in so many ways and she's an inspirer. Professor Tin Mlang really changed the landscape of the way we think and talk about food in Britain. And he's been an inspiration to me since I started at the food program, which is rather a long time ago. And he broke completely new ground when he founded City University of London Center for Food Policy in 1994. And he's been professor of food policy at City since 2002. Many important books he's written, including his newest one, Feeding Britain Are Food Problems and How to Fix Them. So there couldn't be two better people. I won't get to the questions yet because I would like you both to set out your stall as it were. And let's begin with you, Tim, because you have been thinking and writing about our food futures. What would you say, you know, what food futures, what are our choices, Tim? The future depends on what we think the problems are, where we want to go. The data, the evidence says we do in Britain, and I'll come to the world in a bit, have glaring problems of inequalities, diet has gone from being a problem of underconsumption to being one of malconsumption and overconsumption, a problem of obesity and overweight. And look how that's up with us with COVID-19. We've got a major problem of the ecosystems, foods, the agri-food, the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss, water use, you name it, huge problems there. But there is, I think, a critical issue which is peculiarly British, which I think Pauli will agree is historian, which is that Britain, because it had an empire, because it had a very powerful navy and was triumphant after the Napoleonic Wars, essentially by the mid-19th century decided it wouldn't feed itself, it would let others feed itself. And while we no longer have an empire, and it went after World War II, essentially we've begun to be fed by Europe. We produce about 50, 60% of our own food depends how you calculate it. And I think that is now a very big issue. And it's the sleeping elephant in the room about food and the future. But starkly, we've got to decide whether Britain wants to engage with those macro problems of ecosystems, health, inequalities, and so on. Or whether it just wants to carry on with business as usual, but shift from being fed by Europe to, say, being fed by the United States or by, there are some people in the government who actually even just want to get a sort of neo-empower approach or be fed by the Commonwealth, I've heard people say. And others who are just straightforward globalists who say, it doesn't matter where we get it, it's just cheap from anywhere in the world. Those are very big choices. And others think, well, then the end, we'll have to get it from Europe because it's only 24 miles away. Well, those are big choices. I think those macro choices are actually the big politics of food at the moment. But to address those, I'll end with this issue. We've really got to decide, D and I know each other well, on those. We've got to decide whether we think food is just a matter of price, quality, and availability, the classic UN forays, access availability, affordability, et cetera. Or whether we want to include those wider issues of ecosystems and health as well. And that means we've got to rethink governance. And there is a very big problem. We've got it over trade in Britain, in the Intel market over Northern Ireland. Is Northern Ireland having no border with Southern, with the Republic? Or is the border going to be about three miles from where I'm talking to you from at Holly Head? In other words, is that going to be the border? We've got to actually discuss the governance of food. And that's very tricky. It's where the politics with the capital P really kicks in. And so I think part of the choices that I've sketched will only be determined if we get a grip of the politics, the processes, because food, as we all know, isn't just what we eat, it's how we eat and how those decisions are made. Is there going to be companies setting food standards in trade deals or is there going to be the government? If we're leaving the European Union, which we have, who's going to set food standards? That's what we use, this very pompous word, governments. So I see the problems ahead as being doable, but only if we accept what they are. But then we've got choices about where do we want to go? Atlantis is globalist, produce more, be more resilient, have more of our own defense. These are big choices. And I just think the public's not being engaged with it. So the one thing I want is public engagement, which is why we do things like this. Dee, can you let out what you think of the future, what the problems we're facing now and what you think the solutions might be? So I thoroughly agree with Tim on what those problems are. And to follow on from that, it is about governance. And if you're thinking about governance, we need to think about democracy. And how our rights are being eroded as citizens in this country, but not just citizens in terms of nationality, but as food citizens. So we need to rethink what food is. We need to reimagine what food is. And food is more than a price, it's more than being a consumer product. Food is life, food connects us all. Food is love, food is society, food is culture. And we need to imbue food somehow with all these qualities and value it more. So for me, it is about reimagining our food systems. And this time is actually a good time to pivot. The only thing missing for me is that we're not focusing enough on the local. And I'm sitting here in a farm in East Evan, discussing this, how can we produce more food? How can we engage with our population in all its diversity to become part of this food production, food distribution, and then we trade. Once we have a strong home base, then we trade with other parts of the world. But I think that is the issue for right now. We need to build our own food security right here in the UK. And based on the principles of food sovereignty on agroecology. So human rights, workers rights, the ecology, and taking on board all these multiple crises that we have right now. So in terms of climate, in terms of hunger, with hunger being a symptom of poverty, so we have food inequalities. So we can only address those food inequalities to a certain degree by a food system. But it is about challenging the decision makers. We have to challenge the decision makers to do something about inequality in the UK. Thank you. I mean, you both agreed. I think there is a common agreement amongst people who are engaged in looking at the food system. But you say, Tim, about engaging the public. I mean, it's clear that the public at the moment is not engaged. How is this process going to happen? I mean, the government, it seems, indifferent. I think actually I'm going to be more optimistic than you, Sheila. I think the public, in my working lifetime, I've worked in this for 45 years, has got more and more engaged. When I was a child in the 1950s, British food was brown. It's become more colorful. It's become more international. It's been heavily influenced by Europeanization. And whether you use focus group data or opinion polls, just over time, interest has grown, partly fueled by crises, the Metcow disease, BSc being a great moment where the British public began to wake up. So I don't think it's all bad. I think the big leap forward, and I agree with Dee in what she was saying, it's sort of a ratchet up to the next level of food democracy that's needed. We don't have a food committee in the House of Commons. There was actually an interministerial food committee set up in 2007, eight, nine. It was abolished in 2010. I think the COVID-19 and the leaving the European Union is leading towards more structures coming in. So I think whether we look at public attitudes or whether we look at the state, which the current government was very reluctant to get engaged with this, but it's being forced to. And when you see the road haulage industry and the retailers really expressing extreme irritation with government that it still doesn't know how and whether food's going to come through the channel tunnel. I mean, I think the politics is waiting to emerge into a new phase. So I'm more positive about the situation. I think there has been a growth of interest, but we haven't got the big change that I think both Dee and I want. And that won't happen until the governments get sorted out. And that is being forced on us by leaving the European Union. The British public doesn't want chlorinated chicken, doesn't want hormone-fed beef. Meanwhile, Mrs. Truss is doing the deal to get that, but it's being put on hold. And you notice the American government is refusing to do a deal whether Republican or Democratic government until Northern Ireland and the Ireland politics is sorted out. I think this is bringing the pressure on the government whether it lacks it or not. So I'm more positive, even though the situation is messy, than I think you are. Well, I don't like to ask you both what you take from the House of Lords rejecting the governments, as it did the other day, the government's trade bill. Do you think this is going to, along with the pressures from the US, as you've just described to him, do you think this is going to actually change the government's mind in any way? Well, the government's got an art leap in firstly. The government's got a massive majority, can do what it likes, but it's very interesting that the Lords did do that. It's very interesting that even Republican senators and Congress people in the States, the USA, actually said to the British government, sorry, you can't do this. Actually, now that's really shaken the cabinet. They did not expect this. They thought they were going to get a very easy Trump deal which food was there. They thought there would be problems with the British consumer getting upset about a coronated chicken. And that's really a symbol, you know. My friend, Eric Milstone, I did that work. So at one level where please it's become a meme of what's at stake, but it's much more than that. It's about the American model of intensive agriculture versus a European model that Britain's not quite sure whether it wants to carry on or abandon. So there are these quite right. There are huge choices facing farming, but the biggest issue is the British consumer. There are 66 and a half million British consumers. There are only about 300,000 farmers. And farming gets a lot of publicity, but it's not the food system. You know, Polynotes, we all know, the catering industry is 1.8 million people working. Farming is tiny. It should get more money than it gets, but the industry is really being brought to its knees by COVID-19. So I think the picture I'm trying to paint to summarize it in one sentence is a bit by bit whether government likes it or not, reality is being forced on it. And I think the public is not stupid. It sees this and it's gradually getting more engaged and interested in it. So I'm hopeful about that. Well, I'm glad you're hopeful. Are you hopeful? Yeah, definitely hopeful. And, you know, agree with Tim, you know, the public are getting more engaged, I think, through mutual aid groups and what was happening on the ground in terms of communities coming together to feed themselves, people are much more interested in where their food comes from, who's producing it, and, you know, they want to be involved in that decision making. And Dee, you and I would agree. I mean, COVID-19 has really shaken a lot of people. Dee and I are both on the London food board for the non-partisan, for the mayor of London and we're under Boris Johnson. The government thought that only about one and a half million people would need special attention in COVID-19. It's eight million. You see, eight million in the sixth richest economy on the planet, not being adequately fed. And people who were shocked when colleagues and I wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister and to Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the head of Public Health England, saying, look, you've got to ensure that everyone in a crisis gets well-fed. Polling and I know it's historic, she's the proper historian, but I know as an amateur historian, you know, how effective rationing was in the role of the government, making sure that everyone was decently fed or reasonably well-fed. World War II was for morale. We're entering a situation where in dire circumstances which COVID-19 could carry on for years, I had a very elite briefing on it yesterday. You know, some of the modeling, almost all the modeling is showing it going on for two, three years. In which case, this probably ain't gonna go away. And the government knows it's got a problem of food poverty. So I think- I was really interested to read in the Lancet in the last few days where Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief, was saying that it's not a pandemic. It's a syndemic. Yes, it is. Science has been far too narrow and concentrating on controlling the virus and ignoring the fact that what we're seeing is a conjunction of the virus and non-communicable diseases which rise out of inequality and obesity and heart disease and high blood pressure and that if you don't address those two things together, you will never deal with a virus and the virus will come afterwards. Yeah. The notion of syndemics came from our Lancet commission from Rumba, you know, Maitreban. So I'm very aware of that knowledge. It's not just the non-communicable diseases and the football diseases like, you know, pathogens. It's combining with climate change. It's combining with the biodiversity loss. And that's the problem. The enormous challenge that food represents is, and you're asking D and me to say, what sort of future have we got? Well, the future, there will only be a future if we sort out the food system to lower the impact of food on emissions of climate change gases on biodiversity and water use, et cetera. And D and I will argue as groups of social-oriented people that won't happen unless we look after all the people. Before we look after the rich, forget it, the rich. The rich actually need the poor to suit their interests, but really those. But we're at a very poorly bloc areas as a historian. We're at, I think, a 1930s sort of position of where the politics is emerging, but the solutions haven't yet been grasped how enormous they've got to be. You've got to restructure the income of the poor if you want people to be healthy from their diet. The moment people on low incomes eat a lousy diet, get fat, fatter even than the rich, and eat very little fruit and vegetables, sorry. I said the richer thin, that's the mark of being rich. That's right, absolutely. Obesity and overweight are social gradient diseases. So the enormities about putting all of these things together. And that's what the notion of syndemics represents. The syndemics commission of the Lancet is a brilliant report that says it's about putting all of these bits together. Well, food, all of us on this call, know that food is complex. It's not just its values, its income, its culture. And how do you see this? Because you work in an area where most people are poor. They're hard up, they struggle to feed themselves well. And of course, the establishment argument is not just a government argument in the UK. It's that cheap food is necessary because people are poor. And people like us in this debate are privileged and we're middle class. And what are we talking about? We don't understand the world. You do understand that world. What would you say to that argument? You know, cheap food, as I've said before, is costing us all. You know, it costs people's health. You know, people are sick, people are dying. And it's costing our planet, right? Because we're using industrialized methods to produce masses of cheap food. And it's killing, it's killing everything. All right, so people deserve good food, right? People have a right to good food, everyone does. So we need to change our political systems, all right? So that it enables people to have good food. And I think that's where communities are coming in because we cannot wait on government to do that. Which is why communities are looking at farming and producing food for themselves. Communities are training themselves up, all right? But also that political education as well to advocate for others. Because not everyone can speak to politicians, to government or write policy or influence policy. But we need the people who are most affected at the center of any change. Because when ones who understand, Tim, when I was a much younger journalist, I remember meeting you and you saying to me that you could never, you know, don't worry about government, that the change will always come from the bottom up. You know, that's always cheered me as I've, you know, as I sink into my sometimes too easy pessimism. You feel as optimistic about that now as you did then? Changes for the bottom up? I'm smiling because I remember saying that. And yes, I do still say that Sheila, but I have to remind you of my mother who would now be, I think she'd be nearly a hundred years old and is not with us anymore. She always said that I spoke as an optimist because I came out of her backwards. I was a breech baby. In other words, I'm sort of perversely optimistic despite the evidence. The evidence is not good, but I am still optimistic about the sorts of things that Dee was saying and the slow zigzagging growth of public awareness and interest because I think in the end, that does become the political pressure. You can have as many intellectual arguments as you like inside government, outside government, among people like us at the British library or whatever. But ultimately, unless it becomes a mass issue, you don't get the big changes. And I think that's building up in a very, very interesting way where I nearly asked to comment on what Dee was saying. The evidence is that people on low incomes have not that different sets of values of what they want from the food than people who are rich, actually. They just can't afford to do it. They watch the TV. They see the environmental problems. There are a lot of people who aren't interested, but there are growing numbers of people who are. So my optimism is from that, Sheila, that there is a growth of awareness, there's a growth of experimentation like Dee's talking about. The upsurge of the food movement in Britain is remarkable, you know. Just there are hundreds of groups. This week, I was on a climate change citizens' jury in Kendall, which we think is the first one of any town in Britain. And it was remarkable what these people were asking, what they were thinking of, how could they get more farmers in the locality growing shorter supply chain routes. People are thinking a very imaginative way. So, but the biggest issues are framed beyond what we can do at the local level. I'm a localist, but I think it's the regional and the national we've got to sort out as well. And that's tricky. That is tricky. That's where I've become a very sober academic. So I think I haven't lost my marbles. I'm still optimist, but the evidence isn't good in some places. But I think if people keep on getting more and more interested you and Oli are so important in that process, then my optimism remains. I'm glad. Dee, I think about when I first met you and we were judging for the BBC Food Awards and you talked about how you'd found this kitchen in West London that wasn't being used and you just got in there and stuck in. What would you, and you started cooking and you got all these people involved in cooking and all these people involved in eating and you change things, but how would you describe? I mean, here's Tim talking about that kind of movement making him optimistic and then against the big problems. How would you describe the change that you've seen in your area of West London? You know, as I said before, a tough area. Because people are there. I think, you know, apart from getting people in we went on to where people were and I think meeting people where they are is an important thing. So we've never forced anything on the local people. What we created was a safe space where people can come, sit, eat, discuss and eat good food. And that has just sort of mushroomed into this very active community who knows what they want. And they want change. They want good housing. They want good food. They don't want HS2, you know, coming through and have, and you know, we've supported that community in building their, you know, political acumen and to be able to, you know, meet with sort of people from HS2 and with sort of the MP and local councillors and whatever. All right, we have people who've become involved with Friends of the Earth in terms of climate and pollution and so, you know, I think it is trusting that people have the capacity and it is supporting people to be able to do that. And I think probably our biggest fight is trying to save our building and we have brought so many people along with that. And, yeah, I think the power of community is really, really important, really important. And it's still growing. We're still bringing people with us. You know, we have people who receive food aid but they're volunteering. They're supporting our new projects. You know, people are hungry for change, seriously hungry for change and want to be part of that change. I was thinking about just that hungry for change in a program that we made this summer with some teenagers from the Food Foundation who had been, they were leading, they were part of the, you know, their childhood food poverty and they had been recording children, teenagers all over Britain who struggling with the same issues. And one of the things that came up was that hardly any of them could cook. And sometimes this is seen as a trivial question. You know, how important, you know, against these big things of inequality and, you know, the power of agribus, et cetera, how important is knowing how to cook? I think it is extremely important because once you have that skill and experience, you can feed yourself better. You can feed others better. But we have to understand in terms of poverty that impacts on what you eat. It means sometimes not having access to equipment. You know, so we have landlords who would not permit you to have nothing more than a microwave. It is also about having broken equipment or your refugee or asylum a seeker in a hostel. So absolutely no equipment. So it is extremely important and the younger that people learn to cook, the better. So I still have my first cookbook. I learned to cook when I was probably about six or seven and that has always stayed with me as well as, you know, being sort of really enraptured by the natural world and food and taste of food and animals and, you know, just making all the connections. And if we could give our children that type of education, I think, you know, we're building up the next generation of activists and actionists and people who will make that change. Kim, do you think our food future includes everybody having that skill? Well, I'm with Dee and I think skills are really important. For me, well, my lovely colleague, Martin Carrara, and I, 25 years ago, I think more, did a much cited study for the then health education authority. But why teach people to cook? And it's a question that has run through my working life ever since. The answer is in one sentence, control. If you've got the skill to be able to cook, you know what's in it and you can then compare and contrast what you get when you go and buy a ready-made one. Britain, having been an optimist, should I'm not going to be dampening my own enthusiasm, Britain eats the most of all of us, of all Europe, the start sentence again, of all European countries on which there's good data. Britain eats the diet most containing ultra-processed foods. That doesn't mean to say processing can be bad. What we mean by ultra-processing is foods which are high in salt sugar and fat, in other words, they're basically food from anywhere. The cheap commodities used to make something look like the real thing. And Britain has the most. And there's no wonder that we're catastrophically bad when it comes to diet and health. And that goes back to the mid-19th century and nuclear poly, you know, those big decisions that were made by the state, a fight went on inside the British state in the 1820s to mid-1840s, culminated in the repeal of the Corn Laws, where Britain basically said, okay, we're not going to protect our farmers, we're just going to go and get food from anywhere, we've got the Navy to protect it. That model is now to date, but the culture of that is still in place. You can get food from anywhere. Cooking is the antidote to that. At one level, I have a cookbook that I only got about 30 years ago, Cooking is a revolutionary act, which made me laugh then and still makes me laugh now. But I know what it means. It's about taking back control, knowing what real food can be. And you and your program sheet have been so important in that, in the TV programs. One level there, pornography, you watch them but don't do it. Another level, they're very real reminders to Britain that we can actually have food as pleasure, not just food as fuel, which is what the 1840s decision led to, cheap food being the number one criteria. So for me, cooking is very important, but I don't want to make everyone to cook. I think it's lovely not to cook, actually. There's something very nice about the growth of the hospitality sector, the growth of ready-made foods. They're fantastic, actually. They can be fantastic. But the point is what quality and how and are you made dependent on it? Is that the cheapest way to get food? Those are the really subtle things, but if you can't cook, you don't understand that last bit, which is taking raw foods and turning them into what you want to make your life better and happier and more culturally appropriate for yourself. So cooking is very important to me, actually. And I think it is in the little everyday sense. It's a revolutionary act if you cook, actually. You're saying no to Tesco. You're saying no to Unilever. You're saying no to the very big corporations which increasingly dominate food. If you want a burger, you can make it yourself. That's more complicated. But then when you know what a real burger is like, you start asking different questions and you say, do I want a cheap one every day or a really good one once a month? And both sort of questions follow. But I don't know if you would agree with that. Yeah, definitely. And I think what we had a glimmer of hope with this pandemic, with people not being able to access supermarkets and buying into local box schemes and people just cooking more. And for me, that is a glimmer of hope. One of the things that happened in COVID-19, actually, I will be political with the capital P here. I think it was a catastrophic mistake by the government to close down hospitality. Dean and I know, I mean, I think for two years on the London Food Board, I gently kept hitting the table and saying we must deal with the resilience forum. Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, it is the duty of every region to have a resilience forum. I do talks up and down the country and people have never heard of them. This is what is supposed to be there to prepare for crises like COVID-19 and food didn't feature at all. Well, in London, we began to get as denotes, we began to get our resilience forum beginning to think about food and it's not giving away a trade secret. The first finding of the work we did over a year was that really no one had a clue where London's food came from and the retailers didn't want to share that information. And what happened in COVID-19 was the government basically handed the entire food system to nine retailers and they've done incredibly well. They've skyrocketed their sales and their home deliveries and things. Meanwhile, the hospitality sector that I think could have been really helpful in turning its skills and its capacities in a different direction was thrown onto the scrappy. Watch what's happening now. It's again, the hospitality sector being thrown to the scrappy. So here you're seeing some hard politics, Sheila, coming into jobs, the economy, profits, control, hitting on the back of COVID-19. This is going to be really serious politics with the capital view. Why do you think, I mean, it seems extraordinary as you explain it in that way, that the government could have ignored the hospitality industry, which is such a huge part of the economy. How could they have done that? The hospitality, I'm going to be really hard now as a seasoned watcher. The hospitality sector has been very hard to organize, very hard to get the voice that it deserves by the size of it. It's been weak and I'm not being nasty about the industry there. I'm just reporting the reality. It's a fragmented industry. There are some giant corporations which dominate contract catering. Two companies, one friend, one British, have about 15% of the contract catering market of the world. And the same about that in Britain. I think it's about that, I don't quote me. But very powerful. And then you've got tens of thousands of small businesses and some small chains which have got slightly bigger, you know, the leons and things. It's a fragmented industry and it hasn't had a powerful voice. Whereas the retailers are ruthless, very well-prepared. The food manufacturing sector, it's the oldest lobby in Britain, is the food manufacturing sector. So these and farmers very powerfully well organized. Hospitality has been weak. It's easy to get rid of. That's my hard answer, Sheila. And for me, it comes back to that question of governance. You know, who controls our food system? The big corporations and big businesses or our government who represents the interests of people? That sort of brings up a question I was going to ask about Henry Dimbleby's national food strategy because the word resilience is, you know, at the heart of it and in all his talks, Henry Dimbleby has used this word. I mean, D, how would you, what do you think he means by that and how important is it? I think, you know, resilience means being able to withstand shocks. And we sort of withstand the shock of the pandemic. To a certain degree, but the impacts have been, you know, a thing irreparable, right? I don't think hospitality is going to come back anytime soon. So we need to look at what those gaps are. We need to look at, you know, why hospitality, why certain aspects of, you know, our food industry suffered the way we did. So we don't have that resilience. And I don't think we're really seeing the full effects yet. I know prices are going to be going up. The predictions of global food shortages. So we don't have that resilience and we need to build that resilience by looking at the entire, you know, and I think we have more than one system. We have systems and we need to unpick those systems to see how they work. So yes or no, we have some resilience, but not much. I agree with that, Sheila. I was just looking, you can't mention my Feeding Britain book. One of the things I really explored a great length for the reasons these just said was, you know, our capacity of food grain, we have 18.7 million hectares of land in Britain. About 6 million, that's one third of those, are what's called cropable. They might grow grass. They might grow intensive horticulture, but only 165,000 hectares. That's a tiny proportion, not even 1%, less than 1%. It's down for horticulture. So land and land ownership and the use of land is very important if you want to aim for resilience. So when I talk with Henry Dumbledore, I say, look, resilience is a term a bit like sustainability. It's used by arch-right wing capitalists or left-wing eco-warriors. It means different things to different people. If you use resilience in the food system in the ecological sense, exactly as Dee said, the capacity to bounce back off the shop and to continue to deliver capacity, well, we ain't got that. And we've shown it in COVID-19. The horticulture industry, I've just had an email from a leading person in British horticulture, literally today. They've not got the labour force. People are planning not to grow food next year. So in other words, you've got the land, you've got the facilities. We haven't got the labour force. Now, that is a critical example of where food resilience is completely missing in Britain. It's rhetorical, not real. And if you want to really look soberly, as I do in my professional world, at the world's food system, we've got to sort out the mismatch between land use, human capacity, human need for health and food. And we're not doing it. And Britain is still assuming others will feed it. We've been fed 40% plus from the European Union. We've chosen to leave. And now we don't want to know. At current state, the British food industry is saying fresh fruit and vegetables will go up by 30% if there's a no-deal. If Mr. Gove's fantasy of a no-deal Brexit occurs, really big price rises are going to happen. That's not me saying it. That's the industry saying it. So resilience comes down to very practical things like lorries coming through the channel tunnel without any delays to suit the just-in-time food systems of the retailers. If you really want ecological resilience, you've got to go the way that D is going. You want to have more regional foods. You want to have more food coming short supply chains to people. And you want people not having to be reliant upon a factory. That's a very different version of resilience. 100% agree with that. I feel like this hour is inadequate to really explore these extraordinary things. We've come to the point where we're going to our questions from our audience, from our virtual audience. And the first question is, what do D and Tim think are the good bits of the recent food report produced by Henry Dibbleby and what's not so good? But let's talk about the good things. You go first, D. I welcome the bits that are building or rather relieving some aspects of food insecurity. So the increase in the value of a healthy start voucher, extended no recourse to public funds. But we need to understand that those only sticky clusters, we still need to have proper solutions. I think that was about it. OK, Tim, what's the good thing for you? I think the good thing is that it's happening. Remember, after the banking and commodity crisis of 2007, 2008 when oil doubled, went to $100 a barrel and food commodity prices on the world markets doubled as well. Suddenly you got the rich world, which were part, saying, oh, my God, we thought food was a problem for Africa or for the starving billions, but not us. They suddenly realized it was us. I remember talking right at the top level and seeing this enormous shock go in the thing, hardly mostly to go and do something about it. They did, they worked like mad. Britain actually developed a really coherent food policy around food security, welfare, et cetera, by 2010, and then came the coalition government just abolished the lot. We've had 10 wasted years. So the answer, the best thing about the national food structure, Henry Dimbalby's first thing, is that it exists. And it makes me go mad. And I'm really rude notes to Henry Dimbalby saying, if you keep saying this is the first for 75 years, it's a total lie. It's actually the first for nine years. And this government or its remnant in the past abolished really very careful across industry, very careful coordination. So it's terrific. We're getting something. The bad news is coming too late. All the big issues of trade, et cetera, no deals, et cetera, will have been determined by the time the real report comes out. But I'll add that in its content, the thing I'm really cheered about, and D, was the wealth that Henry Dimbalby acknowledged the enormity of the welfare crisis. I mean, he's been well advised. He's under criticism for some of the right-wing conservatives that he's going native. He's not sticking the hard line that he should be doing in the sort of go-vite view. But it's really terrific. He acknowledged the enormous, the 8.1 million. You know, the food standardization says 7.8 million people are going without food in COVID. The food foundation, 8.4 million. You know, these are big numbers for the sixth richest economy in the world. It is terrific that Dimbalby has recognized that, whether he'll be able to deal with that in a way that, in the final report, that requires universal credit, the welfare system, all sorts of things to change, food resilience forums to work properly. I'm not sure. You know, I personally, I wish him well, but it is good that it's happening, but wow, it's a big challenge. Because we've got to deal with climate change. We've got to deal with water. We've got to deal with floods. We've got to deal with infrastructure. Now I'm going to make you depressed. A question here on food standards. Food standards and food labeling. If they're not governed by the EU, how will that be dealt with? Shall I go on that D? Yeah. Well, let me be very academic with difficulty. The food standardization is weak. It's lost. It's already broken up. Scotland's gone its own way. So England and Wales are on their own. We don't know whether Northern Ireland will work to European standards because of the loose or the hard border. All of that is up in the air. And we've just lost access to 33 institutions at the European level, which underpin food standards. And I don't. It's one of the big things Dimblebee's got to resolve. And it's why to be critical about the Dimblebee report first part. He, I think, has caved into the trade and agriculture commission idea that that's going to somehow a little part time organization with no food specialists on it is going to resolve what are good food standards. I fear that we will drop down to codex elementaries commission standards. And that, for those who don't know, is the UN body, which is run jointly by the World Health Organization, the FAO. I've studied that. It's very huge. About 2,000 people over a two, three year cycle operates. They set standards, but they're the lowest of the low, if you like, the minimum. So the question is a very good question. And the answer is we don't know. We do not know who is going to do it. We do not know how it's going to be done. The trade and agriculture commission, some people are pushing for that in the conservative party for that to continue and to be put on the proper footing. If it is, it's a bit like COVID-19. You know, the sage group had no one from public health on it until the independent sage was created. And I've argued with my colleagues, we should be arguing for an independent trade commission so that really we flush out the idiocy of a trade commission setting food standards where it's got no food standards on it. You know, you couldn't make it up. It's ludicrous. But the people will see that they won't like it. They don't want correlated chicken, a committee that hasn't got any experts on it saying, oh, it's all right. We'll deal with Mr. Trump. That won't go down very well. If Mr. Trump is ready. Oh, Tim. I'm still an optimist, Sheila. I'm still an optimist. I'm putting this question to Dee. The problems associated with food, diet, environment, hunger just seems so huge. What would you both, but you first in, do you encourage people to do, to make a difference at an individual level? I mean, we don't want to be overwhelmed by despair. What can you do as an individual? I think we're beyond sort of individual actions in terms of, you know, making better choices at the supermarket. I think this is about people coming together. We have to find our communities. We have to support farmers. We have to, you know, support those organizations and businesses who are making a difference. So it is about committing to that. Find one of those things, you know, if it's hunger, find a poverty, anti-poverty organization and commit to doing some work there. You know, if it's farming, find your local food producer and commit to them. But, you know, we need to be coming together as people and working on this. Tim, one. Well, I'm going to be the boring academic, Sheila, which I am, as you know. I think the things we can do individually is to quietly reject ultra-processed foods where we can. I think we can eat less, but better. It's a pretty good rubric. If you're well off, if you're not well off, just do everything you can to prioritize food as a really important part of hustle budgets. And that's easy to say. I did my first ever research on food poverty in 1981, 1982 in Menstown, Sheffield and Blythe Valley. You know, it's easy to say where you could do it well if you've got a really big well-stocked kitchen and you can live on 9 pounds 32 feet, 14 people on it. It's really hard if you're on low income. I would like to be optimistic and say, I think, you know, I'm with D on this. Food is about pleasure. It's about sociability. Eat with others if you can. But the boring academic in me has to say, cut down on the ready-made foods and eat more fruit and vegetables if you can. It's catastrophic, the underconsumption of fresh fruit and vegetables in Britain. It's catastrophic and rich and poor, it's bad, but it gets worse and worse the lower down the income level you can. So if one's on really low income, really the more you can prioritize having fresh fruit and vegetables and good raw ingredients. And that's where we come back to D's point about cooking. Cooking, if you're doing the labor, you're not paying someone else to do it. The economics don't always work out, actually. Sometimes, you know, factory food can be much cheaper than we can ever produce it. A factory-made pizza can be made much cheaper than I can make one. But if you make pizza yourself, it'll be better quality and you'll feel better and you'll have the pleasure from it in sharing with others. So simple foods, I think, is actually something I find myself increasingly talking about. I mean, eat less, eat simply. But get pleasure from it. Food's about pleasure. Yeah, there was an earlier question, which I sort of ignored, but I think it said, does D think there's a politics and power to pleasure in terms of food? It just seems like we focus on the negative aspects of our relationship with food. Do you think about pleasure, D? Yeah, definitely. And it doesn't matter if you can't afford a big extravagant meal. I think the pleasure comes from sharing that meal with other people. And it's like community gardens. Pleasure comes from producing that food together. So for me, it is all about that common in or commons and valuing food as that essential human resource that we all need to eat. Yeah, that's what I said. Sorry, Tim? I got interested in food when I was doing a doctorate. My doctor was on phobias, and they're the opposite of pleasure, which is why I'm with D all the way. I think trying to build the pleasure out of food, even if we're eating less, but getting more pleasure from it is really important. And for me, gardening is actually very important. One of the things I found very helpful in COVID-19 is more people wanting to have access to gardens and being out there. And we know when people can grow just some bit of food, even if it's just herbs, they get the pleasure of the relationship from seed to their mouth. That pleasure principle seems to be such an important antidote to phobias. And one of the bad things, Sheila, that's happened, I'm now sounding like I'm not an optimist. One of the bad things that's happened in the last 45 years is the growth of food-related phobias, anorexias, bulimias. When I was just finishing my doctorate, I met Suzy Orback, a wonderful work that she pioneered about women and body shape, et cetera. It's actually men body shape as well, children, teenagers being targeted. I think getting cooking is partly a way of getting back at the Instagram world, where you're defined by some celeb who looks like a silk and is probably a limbic or controlled in some other way. That cultural, what I call mass psychological element, it seems to me is a really big challenge ahead. Right at the beginning, I nearly said this, but it's nice to say it now. Regaining control over the mass psychology of food, it seems to me is a really big challenge. And that's why corporate world, what is it? I'm always quoting this. It's Coca Cola's budget, the biggest food and drink company on the planet. A Coca Cola's budget, marketing budget, advertising budget is twice the entire budget for all health of the World Health Organization. So one company there. We've got to wrench back control from that. Say no to them and you're saying yes to yourself. So this leads, we're almost sadly to time. A quick answer from you both, but relevant to what you've just said, Tim. And from Andrew Dutzen, would more structured cookery nutrition education in schools like they used to be, or even in a new way, give a significant help to all these problems to our diet, but all these problems we're talking about today. Dee would. Yeah, most, most definitely, but because schools don't value cookery and food like how they value maps. And that's, you know, it just isn't done. So we as a society need to value food as the most important thing next to water and fresh it. Tim, would it help? I think cookery does help. I've spent a long time in the nineties campaigning for cooking to be brought back into the curriculum. We sort of got there with help from an obscure cook Jamie Oliver who did a great job and continues and Henry Dibbleby did a very good job under the conservatives trying to keep some of that going. But I'll turn it down a bit. I think cooking on its own is not the answer. It's so long term. And let me just tell you, Sheila Dee and Polly, the data say we have to have massive change from food in 25 years. And we can't wait for sort of infants to become mature adults to do that. We've got to begin a really big process of change. So I'd like adults to learn to cook, not just children. But I want to say there's another sea that matters and that's competition policy. You know, there is a very powerful group of companies who dominate food. And if we want democracy and food, we must get more of a grip over this. What's a good market economy seems to me is a really big principle. Market matter, if we bothered about mouths, not just cooking. Oh, Tim. I mean, I feel we have to bring this to a close. And I feel it's just getting, you know, just goes on being stimulating and thought provoking. And I want to thank you very much, but it's been fascinating for me. And I have to hand you back to Polly Russell, the mistress of it all. And our audience. And I'm sorry I couldn't get to more questions. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you, Sheila. I've never been called the mistress of it all, but I'm delighted. That was so thought provoking. Incredibly interesting. What a privilege and a pleasure to have the three of you with your expertise, your passion, your knowledge around this subject. I mean, really, it could have, I mean, we really could go on for so much longer, but so much for people to think about. I'm going to say so much I'm taking away, but the two things which I'm going to sort of resonated me with these words that this is about people coming together and trusting in the power of community. And also this cookery book, which I will be looking up as soon as I go back to, to the British library that Tim mentioned, cooking is a revolutionary act, which indeed it is just what wonderful thoughts to leave with. So thank you so much. Thank you so much to our audience who've really asked a lot of wonderful questions, which unfortunately, we did not have time for. If you've enjoyed this session, which I'm sure you have really do stick around at four o'clock. We've got this follow on free event called beyond the bank building culture and community through food. So relevant really builds on what we've been talking about just now with some amazing organizations from across the country, Bristol Square Square Food Foundation, Community Unity in Leeds, Migrateful and Brixton People's Kitchen, all talking about the amazing work they do. So that's free today. That starts at four. And then later on this week, I just mentioned one event because also relevant in relation to what we've been talking about. We've got the wonderful Carolyn Steel, who I know everybody well, an event about the book that she's just recently written called Cytopia, How Food Can Save the World. And she will be in conversation with Kathal Mani, who is, who works for as director of Sustained, The Alliance for Better Food and Farming, and two, you know, more engaging, lively, fun people in talking about food. You can't imagine other than this panel who have been amazing. So thank you to the panel. Thank you to the audience. Thank you to KitchenAid for sponsoring this event. I hope to see you all in 20 minutes. Go and make a cup of tea. See you soon.