The failings of our food system in the UK could not be more stark; with chemical farming driving environmental decline, nutritious and ethically produced food reserved for those who can afford it, countless households living in food poverty and at the behest of the junk food cycle, and farmers and farmworkers bearing the cost of supply chains that are rigged in favour of a race to the bottom for cheap food and maximising shareholder profits.
The Government’s new Food Strategy could have been an exciting roadmap for change, but it’s fallen short of expectations – and corporate interests have dominated once again.
The UK Government’s Food Strategy was published this week, and for those who have been following food policy in England for the past few years, this might seem like a ‘deja vu’ moment. Six years ago, the Conservative government commissioned Henry Dimbleby to conduct an independent food system review, which led to the publication of ‘The Plan’ in July 2021 and the Government’s own Food Strategy White Paper in June 2022.
Attempting to pick up where the previous government left off, under the leadership of DEFRA’s Steve Reed, with the input from a specially selected ‘Advisory Board’, and after several consultation workshops with experts from across the food system (including input from Rebecca Laughton on behalf of LWA), Labour have published their new Food Strategy under the title ‘Good Food Cycle’.
The document is just over 5,000 words long, and significantly lighter on detail than Dimbleby’s 286 page report from 2021. Despite using bold language about farming being the ‘beating heart’ of the UK economy, the strategy includes very little detail on how it’s going to build a more resilient and thriving food system for England. It does however, repeatedly centre the interests of ‘business’, outlining its intention to create a food system in which ‘businesses have the confidence to invest’, with Daniel Zeichner adding that they intend to ‘help the amazing businesses that feed our nation to grow and thrive.’
We know that ‘what’, we need the ‘how’
The Strategy includes a list of 10 goals to build a more sustainable and resilient domestic food supply, improve access to affordable healthy food, and make our food supply more environmentally sustainable, but omits any detail on ‘how’ these goals will actually be achieved.
The goal for improving access to good food for all only includes improving access to food which is ‘safe, affordable, healthy, convenient and appealing’, deliberately leaving out food that is ethically produced and environmentally sustainable. We want to see a commitment to a legally enshrined Right to Food which includes criteria on how food is produced and to what environmental and ethical standards. This would then lay the foundations for more agroecological peri-urban food production, for example, which would provide a resilient supply of fresh, nutritious food to urban areas while also promoting biodiversity and green spaces. We also want to see clear policies for how access to good food will be improved through things like reducing inequalities, cash-first solutions and community kitchens.
Where the Strategy does lay out goals for an environmentally sustainable food supply, it only mentions high animal welfare standards and reduced waste, leaving out key aspects of nature-friendly food production such as the need to phase out chemical inputs, adopt a land-sharing approach to farming and biodiversity, and reduce our overseas land use footprint.
The goal regarding ‘good growth’ does mention fairness in the supply chain which is reassuring to see. It also mentions wanting to build a skilled food system workforce, but we would also encourage Labour to be more explicit by committing to fair pricing mechanisms for farmers, fair wages and conditions for workers (including migrant workers), and more support for new entrants.
We can’t trade our way to resilience
However, where the Strategy really falls down is when it comes to setting out its goals for a resilient UK food supply. It highlights how Labour have already secured ‘a hat trick of trade deals’, opened up ‘new markets for exporters’ and begun ‘negotiations to cut red tape with our closest trading partners’, proceeding to include ‘expand export opportunities’ in its list of goals.
It’s difficult to see how new trade deals and expanding export markets contribute to a more resilient UK food system – particularly against a backdrop of increasingly frequent global supply chain shocks, political instability and climate breakdown – but it is easy to see how they will open up new income streams for big businesses and attract more corporate power into the UK’s food system, ultimately eroding our national food sovereignty.
Instead of opening up new export markets, we want to see a plan for building a more resilient UK food supply underpinned by clear targets for more home-grown fruit, vegetable and pulses production, protecting British farmers through higher import standards and tariffs, and investing in local food systems. Where local food systems are mentioned, the Strategy simply sets a goal for making people ‘more connected to their local food systems’, rather than working to upscale local food systems across England, and invest in the right infrastructure to make this happen.
Corporate interests
It’s difficult not to be frustrated with the lack of ambition on this strategy, but it also comes as no surprise considering who the primary advisors were. With just one farmer on the board, nearly half of the members on the Food Strategy Advisory Board have vested interests in agri-industrial corporations. No wonder there is little focus on local food, vague language around environmental commitments, and an emphasis on trade deals and exports.
Members of the Advisory Board included:
– Andrew Selley, CEO of Bidcorp, a broad-line foodservice group listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa which has an annual turnover of £2 billion;
– Jilian Moffatt from the Canadian multinational frozen food company McCain Foods;
– Ash Amirahmadi, former CEO of Sofina Foods, a Canadian owned company which supplies fish and pork in the UK;
– Simon Roberts, Sainsbury’s CEO;
– and Tim Smith, Chairman of Cranswick, a large-scale supplier of meat products whose primary shareholders include investment firms BlackRock Inc, The Vanguard Group, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
A focus on new trade deals and expanding export markets only serves to consolidate more corporate power in the food system, and Cranswick is a perfect example of this. The most recent figures from 2015 show that Cranswick was exporting £24 million worth of pork products to China every year, but in 2019 this export license was paused due to Covid-19. In December 2024 Cranswick had its China export licence reinstated for its Norfolk processing facility, resulting in a 10.2% increase in its fresh pork export revenue.
In April of this year, Cranswick was denied planning permission for a new megafarm in Norfolk which would have housed almost 900,000 pigs and chickens at any one time. The groups that challenged the planning proposal said that it would threaten jobs on local farms, and have serious negative climate and environmental impacts. These export-oriented operations do nothing for British farmers or UK food supply, and will ultimately put shareholder profits above animal welfare, climate and nature; yet these are the kinds of interests which are being represented in the Food Strategy.
It was, however, reassuring that Anna Taylor from The Food Foundation was also on the Advisory Board, especially in light of the work The Food Foundation has been going to expose corporate lobbying in the UK food system. In April they published a report revealing that between January 2020 and June 2024 DEFRA ministers met with food businesses and their trade associations 40 times more often than with food NGOs. The report concluded that “the extent to which endemic power imbalances within the food system are warping democratic processes and hampering the ability of governments to intervene in support of people and planet is now a serious cause for concern.”
It’s also important to understand the role that large food and drink corporations play in perpetuating the junk food cycle. A 2024 report from Bite Back found that 7 in 10 major food and drink companies in the UK are mostly selling unhealthy and ultra-processed food. Other research has found that a key driver of dietary shifts towards ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is the global rise of UPF corporations such as PepsiCo and Unilever, whose political activity and lobbying efforts actively counter opposition and block government regulation. If labour are serious about breaking the junk food cycle, then they need to break the cycle of corporate lobbying.
A global trend
The influence of corporations in food system decision-making isn’t unique to the UK. LWA’s Food Justice Policy Coordinator Dee Woods has been taking part in the global UN Committee on World Food Security negotiations, as part of the Civil Society and Indigenous People’s Mechanism (CSIPM). They have been fighting an uphill battle to raise the voices of small-scale farmers, peasants and Indigenous people in a decision-making process which is dominated by corporate actors. The CSIPM recently released a press release announcing that they will not be taking part in the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit Stocktake +4 (UNFSS+4), at the end of July, calling out the fact that “no meaningful changes have been made to the Summit’s direction, governance and safeguards against corporate influence since 2021.”
Pauline Verrière, a CSIPM Coordination Committee member commented: “We believe the UNFSS legitimizes an agro-industrial system, and the financial interests of a few, to the detriment of peoples’ rights. This system and its interests are at the heart of the problem.”
Giving food producers a voice
Going forward we hope to be more involved in how the Government’s Food Strategy will be implemented, to represent the interests of our farming members, and be invited to put our proposals for meaningful policies forward. We want to see an expanded food production workforce established through more support for new entrants into farming, through land-match services and more training opportunities. We want to see a Horticulture Strategy which centres on increasing homegrown agroecological fruit and vegetables production, through capital grants for market gardens and specific support packages for small-scale horticulture in the SFI.
We would welcome any invitation from DEFRA to input into these decisions and actions going forward, and for greater involvement of grassroots organisations which represent farmers and landworkers on the ground who are working to improve UK food sovereignty.
Want to find out more about how corporate interests are shaping our food systems?
Join this webinar:
Naming the Elephants in the Room: Addressing corporate and geopolitical power in food systems transformation
Date: 25 July 2025
Time: 1:00 – 3:00 pm UK time.
Register through Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/nJVR29c0Tb6vRQOXnn1Pow#/registration
Transforming food systems requires confronting the forces that often remain unspoken such as corporate influence and geopolitical power. Join the CSIPM for a conversation that will explore how these powers shape food policies, markets, and global governance, and what actions are needed to ensure food systems transformation.
