Newsletter – May 2026
27 May 2026
This is our newsletter for May 2026. Please note that this page is not updated, so deadlines may have passed and links may no longer work. To receive future newsletters, please join our network.
Save the date for our June Webinar
23 June 2026, 4-5pm
We know how to build a better food system, so why does change keep stalling? Food futurist Jack Bobo argues the real obstacle isn’t technical but social: it comes down to trust, language and the competing stories we tell about food. Get the framing right and you build the coalitions change needs; get it wrong and you drive people apart. Join us for the opportunity to ask questions & to hear more from Jack Bobo (Executive Director of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies).
More soon!
Join us at Groundswell 2026
1-2 July, Hertfordshire
This year, we’re hosting a tent with our friends from Land Use for Net Zero Nature and People (LUNZ) Hub, LUNZ Grasslands, LUNZ Openland, LUNZ JustLanz, Transforming UK Food Systems, Eunomia, and Backcasting to Achieve Food Resilience in the UK.
We’ve got a wide variety of sessions with a host of great panellists and speakers:
- Food Security IS National Security: Is UK farming ready? Chaired by Emily Norton (Norfolk farmer and founder, Farm Foresight Ltd), with Daniel Zeichner (MP for Cambridge and former Defra Minister of State for Food Security & Rural Affairs)
- Playing with Food: A Serious Game to Stress-Test UK Food System Resilience led by Matteo Menapace (Beesnees Games Ltd)
- Farming well for the future: How grasslands can help meet sustainability challenges led by Lisa Norton (Senior Scientist UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology)
- Community Power from Farm to Fork: Advancing Food Justice & Equitable Food Access – Led by Fergus Lyon (Professor of Enterprise and Organisations at Middlesex University)
- Measuring what matters: Aligning farm reality with supply-chain needs
AFN wins Knowledge Exchange Project of the Year at UEA
The AFN Network won the Knowledge Exchange Project of the Year award at the University of East Anglia’s annual Innovation and Impact Awards ceremony on 20 May.
Neil Ward accepted the award on behalf of the AFN Team. He said, “The AFN Network has been a great project to work on. The positive feedback from the Network’s more than 3,000 members has given us encouragement to carry on the work through Root and Reason”. Neil paid tribute to all involved in running the Network, and especially to Knowledge Exchange Fellow Jez Fredenburgh.
Proposal development workshop for National Lottery Food Systems call
With thanks to our collaborators, Eating Better and Farming the Future, we had a fantastic session earlier in the month at our facilitated workshop designed specifically to help you develop your proposals for the National Lottery Community Action Fund (Food Systems).
We saw lots of new connections being made and had the privilege to hear about a wide variety of proposals in development.
If you’d like to find out more about our participants or add your details to our public slideset, please get in touch: contact@rootandreason.org.uk
The Lincolnshire Food Summit
This event brought together citizens, growers, and policymakers to build a more resilient regional food system. Root and Reason’s Sarah Bridle and Dominic Watters opened the event, by combining research on UK food crisis pathways with Dominic’s lived experience of food insecurity. The participants’ passion for high-quality, accessible food was truly inspiring. Lincolnshire clearly has the ingredients to use a resilience lens to transform its food system and strengthen its communities.
In case you missed them:
Watch our May webinar ‘From Plans to Practice: Building Community Food Resilience in Bristol’
It was great to see so many of you join us to hear Heloise Balme talk about the Bristol Food Disaster Risk Planning project and Bristol’s wider work to build a more resilient local food system through the Bristol Good Food 2030 partnership.
You can watch the video to see Heloise’s talk and hear her answering audience questions.
Digest: Negotiating reform – what Denmark’s tripartite agreement says about the politics of food system change
Identifying the costs of aligning farming with climate, nature, and just transition goals has stalled agri-food reform across much of Europe. Denmark’s empirical response? A new CO2 tax on agricultural emissions is likely to result in just a 1 percent rise in food prices.
Digest: The case for food system resilience is getting stronger
Our Roadmap argued that the UK food system faces intensifying disruption and requires transformational change. Since then, three developments have tested that argument…
News from the wider agri-food sector:
Funding Opportunities:
Pushing the frontiers of environmental research
This funding opportunity supports researchers’ curiosity and imagination to enable discoveries that unlock new knowledge with a degree of adventure previously unrealised.
The Natural Environment Research Council is seeking to invest in the best environmental researchers to be truly adventurous and ambitious in pursuing curiosity-driven, high-reward projects that may involve substantial risk.
Applications can propose pure, applied, technology-led, or policy-driven research, but must address, or provide the means to address clearly defined environmental science questions.
Open – No closing date
Events:
EDI-Centred Facilitation Training
16 June in Birmingham and 9 July in Newcastle
The Land Use for Net Zero Nature and People (LUNZ) Hub is hosting EDI-Centred Facilitation training in Birmingham and Newcastle for those working at the intersection of land use, agri‑food, and academia.
Sessions during the day will include:
- Self-Awareness and Cultural Awareness
- The Role and Impact of Bias, Principles for Respectful Inquiry and Inclusive Language
- How to Create an Inclusive Meeting Space
The Future of Protein: Risk, Opportunity and the Path to Transition at LCAW
24 June at Sustainable Ventures, London
Planeatry Alliance is hosting a session at London Climate Action Week for those working at the intersection of food system transformation and commercial decision-making. The session will cover:
- The commercial case for protein diversification, market trends and opportunities
- Price, placement and behaviour change: lessons from retail settings
- How isolated examples of progress can lead to cumulative, market-level change
The event is free and open to all – Register here
AHDB and ADOPT roadshows
AHDB and ADOPT are holding a series of practical, on-farm roadshows this month and next, focused on a variety of topics and hosted at different working farms across England. They’re designed to bridge the gap between research and real-world farming decisions.
And don’t forget that the Full ADOPT grant round seven is open until 3 June. Farming, growing, and forestry businesses based in England can apply for a share of up to £5 million for on-farm trial and demonstration projects, to improve the adoption of new ideas or solutions in the agricultural sector.
Opportunities:
Call for abstracts for the Land Use for Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub Early Career Conference
The conference theme is “Future Careers at the Science–Policy Interface: Exploring Opportunities and Challenges in LUNZ.” They welcome poster and oral presentation abstracts from early career researchers and practitioners working on topics including transdisciplinary collaboration, science communication, land use change, just transitions, community resilience, and nature-based Net Zero transitions. Work in progress and interdisciplinary contributions are encouraged.
The conference takes place on 7 September 2026 (1 – 6pm) at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, ahead of the LUNZ consortium meeting (8–10 September).
The deadline for abstract submissions is 30 May 2026.
Resources:
Dyfed Powys Civil Food Resilience project
A new report, commissioned by the Local Food Partnerships of Dyfed Powys and led by Bwyd Powys Food hosted by Cultivate has been published highlighting the fragility of our food supply. The report provides a robust evidence base and practical insights to inform a future Food Resilience Strategy for the region. It highlights the critical need for civil preparedness against intensifying risks, including extreme weather events, geopolitical instability, energy price volatility, and cost-of-living pressures, as well as improving longer-term food system resilience.
Civil Food Resilience in Practice
Sustain and Sustainable Food Places have launched their new report, Civil Food Resilience in Practice, alongside a webinar recording available here. Building on Tim Lang’s Just in Case briefing, the report and its 8 UK case studies showcase how local food partnerships use simulations and reviews to build capacity. The publishers aim to use these findings to engage policymakers, unlock resources, and mandate local food resilience activities.
What are climate tipping points and how might they affect the UK?
As global warming approaches 1.5°C, parts of the climate system are at increasing risk of undergoing potentially abrupt, long-lived and irreversible shifts. You can read a POST Rapid Response briefing that looks to address questions about what these tipping points are, how we might recognise them and how we might avoid them.
A Well-Adapted UK
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has warned that escalating risks like heatwaves and flooding could cost the UK up to 5% of its annual GDP by 2050 without urgent action. However, their landmark report, A Well-Adapted UK, offers a “message of hope,” outlining how an investment of roughly £11 billion per year—split between public and private funding—can protect the nation. The recommended strategy focuses on eight critical areas, including upgrading cooling systems, reinforcing flood defences, and safeguarding food and energy security.
Your views needed:
Biofortification Survey
Twisted Orange is undertaking a research placement with the John Innes Centre, part of which explores stakeholder perspectives on biofortification. They are keen to gather input from across the sector, including research, production, manufacturing, retail, and related areas. Whether your work involves biofortification, you are planning to develop or utilise biofortified products in the future, or the area of biofortification is completely new to you, they would really value your input.
The survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete, and all responses are anonymous.