FAQ

We started The Food Conversation in 2023 through a series of workshops with a representative group of citizens in Birmingham and Cambridge, and it is now continuing around the UK throughout the rest of 2024.

Workshops with citizens – unprecedented in scale – are taking place across the UK to understand better the kinds of changes citizens are looking for from business, government and civil society. Throughout the project we are involving local leaders, national politicians, food businesses and more. We are also building partnerships with organisations who can help extend the reach and scale of the project. Initially reaching 300+ citizens through the workshops, ultimately the project is involving thousands of people through national polling and work with local partners, membership organisations and more.

The first citizen workshops started in June 2023 with two sites (Birmingham and Cambridgeshire) and 40 participants per site.

Throughout 2024 and into 2025, The Food Conversation is travelling across all four countries of the UK, bringing together citizens from England (confirmed locations include Northumberland, West Yorkshire, East Kent, South London & Croydon & Cornwall) Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

These kinds of citizen workshops are sometimes known as ‘citizen dialogues’ or ‘deliberative dialogues’, which involve bringing together a group of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences to explore a topic together. Through online and in-person meetings, they learn more about the issue, have informed discussions, and work together to reach a shared understanding on the best course of action.

Consistent with citizen dialogues exploring the climate and nature crises, we started with the premise that there are problems in the food system that need to be tackled. We aren’t asking citizens to come up with new ideas, but rather testing their appetite for a variety of policy ideas and interventions proposed in the last 10 years.

For our citizen workshops in 2024, they are spending 20+ hours together discussing and debating the issues, hearing from speakers and exploring case studies, examining not whether the way food works now needs to change, but how. They are considering different policy and practice changes that have been proposed by others, including the National Food Strategy, and identifying what to prioritise and by whom. Participants will also come together for a national summit in 2025, to reflect across the four UK nations and share their views directly with senior policymakers.

2024

March 2024

In our March 2024 workshops, citizens from across the UK heard from a range of speakers on specific issues, as well as from people representing food retail and manufacture.

Professor Sarah Bridle (University of York) shared her expertise on food, climate and society to give an introduction to the food system, while Professor Rebecca O’Connell (University of Hertfordshire) and Food Ethics Council’s Dan Crossley explored dietary and food inequalities in a cost of living crisis. Citizens also watched a short clip of Dr Vicky Sibson (Director of First Steps Nutrition) for an introduction to child nutrition, and heard from Kristin Bash (University of Sheffield) on the impacts of ultra-processed food and those high in fat, salt and sugar. Andrew Stark from Eating Better provided insights into the impacts of intensively farmed meat and chicken and other land use issues related to food.

Exploring the mechanisms for policy change, Professor Nick Pearce (Director at the Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath) and Dr Kelly Parsons (Research Associate, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge) gave citizens an overview of how policies are made in the UK. And Professor Tim Benton from Chatham House offered a deep dive into lock-ins in the food system.

From a retail and farming perspective, citizens heard from Joe McDonald, Head of Corporate Affairs at Asda NI, George Hosford, recently NFU Chair for Dorset and Judith Batchelar, formerly Sainsbury’s.

April 2024

In our citizen workshops in April 2023 in Kent, West Yorkshire and Northumberland, citizens again interacted with Professor Sarah Bridle, Dan Crossley, Dr Vicky Sibson and Dr Kelly Parsons on the subject matter noted above. They also gained an introduction to food systems from Professor Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Associate Professor of Food Systems at UWE, and explored issues around dietary inequalities with Professor Charlotte Hardman from the Institute of Population Health at the University of Liverpool. Sarah Wakefield, Executive Director at Eating Better provided insights into industrial chicken and meat production and land use, while Dr Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde from the University of Cambridge’s MRC Epidemiology Unit spoke to citizens about ultra-processed food.

To understand more about nature and farming, citizens heard from Alec Taylor, Head of Policy at WWF, Joe Stanley, farmer and Head of Sustainable Farming at the Allerton Project, and saw a video by Tom Clarke, farmer. Lisa Walbom, CEO of Food Nation Denmark shared the Danish experience of food policy. Citizens also heard from a panel offering business and citizen perspectives, which included Amy McDonnell from Danone, Emma Keller at Nestle, David Wilson from Earth Time Farming and Claire Moriarty, Chief Executive at Citizens Advice. Finally, citizens heard from Mary Brennan, Chair of Food Marketing and Society at the University of Edinburgh on devolved aspects of food policy.

2023

In our workshops back in summer 2023, citizens had the chance to hear from people who have been directly involved in this work over the years including respected academics like Professor Tim Benton (Chatham House), Prof Christina Vogel (City University of London), Dr Kelly Parsons, (University of Cambridge) and Prof Angelina Sanderson-Bellamy (UWA), industry representatives Judith Batchelar OBE (formerly of Sainsbury’s), and farming voices Tom Clarke (NFU/AHDB) and Liz Bowles (Farm Carbon Toolkit).  They also heard from leaders of food and poverty charities like Denise Bentley (First Love Foundation) and Heather Buckingham (Trussel Trust) and from NGOs like Helen Browning OBE (Soil Association), Alec Taylor (WWF) and Emma Marsh (RSPB), as well as those involved in the details at a local level like Justin Varney and Sarah Pullen (Birmingham City Council).  They also watched news clips and interviews with experts and campaigners like Dr Chris van Tulleken talking about specific issues like UPFs.

The facilitation is being led by Hopkins van Mil and supported by TPX Impact. Both agencies have a great deal of experience conducting similar deliberative processes across the UK.

The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (ffcc.co.uk) commissioned the project - but lots of organisations, academics and charities have been working on these issues for a long time.

We have drawn on the expertise and experience of a wide range of organisations so far, including WWF, National Trust, RSPB, Soil Association, FOLU, WRAP, National Federation of Women’s Institutes, Sustainable Food Trust, Food Ethics Council, Green Alliance, Which?, Local Trust and European Climate Foundation.

Taking place in 10+ locations around the UK, each set of workshops (sometimes known as citizen dialogues or deliberative dialogues) involves about 30 citizens who are broadly representative of their location and invited through a postcode lottery by Sortition Foundation.

Demographic criteria include gender, age, ethnicity, disability, education, index of multiple deprivation, and urban/rural and we were careful to include people on all sides of political debate.

The whole process is designed to be easy to understand and engaging, so that everyone – no matter what their background or interest – can participate. Nonetheless, it is methodologically robust, enabling in-depth conversation and deliberation (similar to approaches developed for citizen assemblies).

Experience suggests that the best conversations arise when the structure is not overly prescriptive, so we are trying to leave room for conversations to evolve naturally amongst participants. The discussions are loosely focused on themes including Food & health; Food, farming & land use; Food & justice; Food, climate & nature.

The Food Conversation's extensive and representative citizen workshop sessions in Birmingham and Cambridge in 2023 have been reinforced by the findings of a nationally representative More in Common poll of 2,000 people - which shows that UK citizens across all demographics, age and political groups reject ‘nanny state’ concerns and want the government to do more to fix food. Read the news story.

More recently, polling in March 2024 unearthed the real and growing food crisis in the UK.

Explore our full findings here.