About - Root and Reason

About Us

Root and Reason, the food resilience collective, is shaping change in the UK food system by cultivating informed, system-wide collaboration.

We are working to build a resilient food system that is prepared, empowered, and equitable, where change happens with people, not to them.

An independent, non-profit initiative, we connect actors at all levels, across sectors, disciplines and demographics, and empower them with the robust evidence they need to make informed decisions.

Bringing together policymakers, businesses, front-line services and community groups, we are working to

Create shared plans to fix systemic failings and cope with disruption
Ensure clear accountability for outcomes
Give voice to the communities most affected

Our values

Across all our work, three enabling conditions act as lenses through which we design and assess everything we do:

Readiness:
Will this hold? We stress-test whether current systems and proposed solutions are robust under disruption, not just optimised for good conditions.
Accountability:
Who acts? We insist on clarity about who is responsible for what, and we develop and deploy mechanisms to track whether commitments are being met.
Justice:
Is this just? We ask whether change is equitable and inclusive, recognising that food system transformation relies on just processes and structures as well as outcomes.

We believe that to create a truly resilient and equitable food system, we must collaborate effectively system-wide and consider these three conditions in all we do.

Our History

In 2022, UK Research and Innovation gave the Agri-food for Net Zero Network+ three years’ funding to shape the next decade of research supporting the UK agri-food system’s journey to net zero.

We also published several landmark resources, including our 2050 Scenarios, Future Food Calculator, and ‘Roadmap for Resilience – a UK Food Plan for 2050,’ developed in collaboration with over 150 partners including the NHS, National Farmers Union, DEFRA, UK Treasury, and Climate Change Committee.

Through our work, we discovered just how closely net zero goals align with healthy diets, food security, and economic prosperity for people as well as businesses.

As our funding came to a close, our team felt compelled to continue, with more focus on action than research alone. In April 2026, Root and Reason was formed as a natural evolution of the UKRI Agri-food for Net Zero Network+.