“We have to work together to create and deliver a healthy and sustainable food system that’s accessible to all.”
Professor Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Professor of Food Systems
Yes, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to make our food system healthy, sustainable and accessible.
For example, one of the big, big questions of the moment is how we get our food system to net zero. 2050 isn’t very far away and, right now, our food system accounts for approximately 30% of our emissions here in the UK. This is the size challenge we all face. It’s huge, especially when you think about the land management side of it.
Food for thought
13% of all UK emissions come from our land management, which is essential farming and farmers. And we’re asking a lot of our farmers at the moment. As well as our zero emissions target, we have the continued cost of living crisis. We’re also asking them to help us restore biodiversity and to help secure our food supplies. And, all the while, subsidies to farmers are being cut. It’s a perfect storm. And we need a response.
So, I do a lot of collaborative work with stakeholders across the food system. I have some strong partnerships on the ground, and we’re all seeing the day-to-day challenges. Wearing my research hat,
I’m thinking about what we can do collectively to address this perfect storm. What are the funding opportunities that could be brought to bear here? How do we go about creating those changes that we want to see?
Applied research, real change
So, my work is all about applied research to deliver real change. The change we need. Traditionally, I think research has happened in a kind of vacuum. You went off, wrote your publication, only for it to sit on a dusty shelf or be read by a handful of people. That’s not good enough anymore.
The sort of grand challenges we’re facing today, the megatrends we need to respond to, they require active collaboration between researchers and practitioners and communities. This is the only way that we can really understand the changes on the ground and work together to try and figure out what’s the best pathway forward.
Transforming food policy
One of my biggest passions is how we can make food sustainable and healthy and available to everyone. To low income households, because everybody has a right to eat healthy, sustainably produced food. And if we’re going to hit those net zero targets, everybody needs to be eating it. But how?
Some of the change needs to happen at policy level. I’m part of the board for the Food Policy Alliance Cymru. We’re a coalition of organisations and stakeholders working together to build and promote a collective vision for the Welsh food system. It’s a fantastic group. We like each other, we trust each other, we believe in each other and what we’re doing. We bring very different skills to the group too. I’m the academic, I bring the research, the evidence. And while the information I bring is neutral, impartial, I definitely have an agenda. I want to create transformation.
Our window for change is now
I think that we’re in a moment of change. There are windows of opportunities created by many different things, all colliding at the same time. Coming out of Brexit, COVID, the Ukraine conflict, the cost of living crisis. Suddenly, we need to develop our own agricultural policies, our own food strategy.
We have many challenges. But I’m optimistic that we can solve these challenges. We have to. I’m inspired by all the amazing things that people are doing on the ground, in their communities. There’s incredible innovation and energy there. We now need to figure out how to replicate that at scale.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
