'Incrementalism is Dead': The FDF Calls for Radical Action
The food and drink industry must abandon its incremental approach to sustainability and embrace transformative change. That was the warning from industry leaders, as the Food and Drink Federation's (FDF) launched its Ambition 2030 strategy at London Zoo in October 2024.
There are "crossroads moments" aplenty in the field of sustainability, but perhaps nowhere is the label so pertinent as in the food and drink sector.
The FDF's event featured panels of expert speakers from the commercial, non-profit and political realms, all of whom furnished the packed room with worrisome statistics throughout the day.
One such stat was gleaned from a recent study conducted by York University, where it was revealed that 80% of food experts believe the UK could face civil unrest due to food insecurity in the next 50 years.
"Incrementalism is dead," declared chair Mike Barry, during one of the event's opening speeches - a remark that set the tone for a day fuelled by urgency.
What we learned from the event
If it weren't apparent already, this event stressed the sheer amount of challenges that face the UK's (and indeed the world's) food and drink industry.
Issues of resource security, environmental degradation and social inequality all converge in this sector, which, as many of the attending experts highlighted, is one of the most essential industries to human life. To hammer this point home, Mike Barry cited an old MI5 maxim, which suggests that the UK is only ever "four meals from anarchy". This old phrase contains three simple truths:
- Widespread hunger is an inevitable cause of social unrest.
- Supply chains are precarious.
- Sustainable agriculture is essential.
With these messages in mind, the FDF team presented its strategy.
The FDF's five pillars of change
The FDF's strategy stands upon five key pillars. These are the five core principles that the federation's future will be guided by as it aims to increase the sustainability of the food and drink industry at large.
- The first of those pillars is 'Achieving Net Zero'. The sector accounts for nearly 25% of the country's annual carbon emissions, so reducing that footprint is crucial.
- The second is 'Nature Restoration', to which end the FDF's event repeatedly promoted the principles of regenerative agriculture (farming that benefits the land). The specifics of this term were subject to some debate throughout the day, though, with Simon Hodgson, CEO of SLR, saying that the FDF needed to provide stakeholders with a "clear definition" they could measure their own farming practices against.
- The FDF's third pillar is 'Sustainable Commodities'. As highlighted in Ambition 2030, agricultural expansion accounts for 90% of deforestation globally, meaning that the food industry holds primary responsibility for ensuring that trading with deforestation-made products is curbed.
- Fourth is 'Food Waste Reduction', a particularly tricky problem. Speaking at the event, Catherine David, Executive Director of Behaviour Change and Business Programmes at WRAP, told audiences consumers are the primary problem, not retailers or producers. Catherine revealed that the average UK family throws away £1,000 (US$1,250) of good food every year - an issue WRAP is struggling to resolve.
- And the FDF's final pillar is 'Packaging Reform'. This importance of this principle is supported by a report recently published by DS Smith, which showed that 51% of all supermarket products were unnecessarily packed in plastic, a large proportion of which is not recyclable.
Help, not hindrance: how to harness data
Data management emerged as a central theme during the conference. Tracy Banks, Climate Action Programme Manager at the British Retail Consortium, spoke on a panel focusing on supply chains. She noted that retailers are spending 80% of their time on data collection and only 20% on actionable sustainability initiatives.
This split (known as the Pareto Principle) is mirrored in data analysis teams, where analysts spend 80% of their time finding and organising data rather than performing meaningful analysis.
Simon Hodgson, Founder of market-leading sustainability consultancy SLR, echoed Tracey's concerns over the inefficiency of data-obsessed approaches to sustainability. He said: "We’ve talked a lot about data here today; I’m a bit of a data sceptic. You need data to start with, but you don’t need it to be perfect.”
Then, there's the lack of transferable data between farms, between companies, between countries. The lack of standardisation amongst datasets makes it hard for those in the industry to get the full picture. This was a concern voiced again and again at the event, though there were some interesting solutions posited by the panellists.
Some pointed to the work DEFRA is doing in harmonising data amongst British suppliers, with projects like the everchanging Food Data Transparency Partnership.
Some demanded more of the government, calling for increases in funding for these projects, in an effort to initiate the revolutionary potential of data.
Others, like Jen Emerton, Head of Business Engagement at WRAP, urged the audience not to get too bogged down in data, saying: "Progress over perfection. Creative thinking, with evidence, with ambition. That should get us to our targets."
How to make a supply chain sustainable
Supply chains were another major talking point amongst the experts in attendance at the FDF's conference. In the food industry, supply chains can be huge, unwieldy things with huge distances between retailer and producer.
This distance can make it hard for companies to observe how sustainably their suppliers behave, which is, of course, an important thing to measure for companies attempting to reduce their Scope 3 emissions.
Emma Keller, CSO of Nestlé for the UK & Ireland, spoke at length about how her company - one of the world's largest food retailers - manages its supplier relations to prioritise sustainability.
Some - like the British fairy farmers with whom the company has worked for 21 years - are very open to Nestlé investing in new sustainable infrastructure for them.
Others - like the East Anglian wheat farmers Nestlé use - are more amenable to programme-based sustainability initiatives. Nestlé's Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) programme includes sustainability bonuses for milk producers and funding for landscape-changing initiatives.
Whichever approach businesses take to managing supply chains, Emma advocates for action. "If we're not investing in sustainability, we're not a relevant business," she says.
The road to 2030 and beyond
The strategy emphasises the need for industry-wide collaboration and standardisation, to ensure that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, especially when it comes to data collection and reporting.
However, some audience members questioned whether the industry's approach matches the scale of the challenge, particularly given Mike Barry's assertion that "we already need to be thinking about 2035."
"Voluntary action is always going to be important," Emma said, addressing the balance between industry leadership and regulation. "We need leaders to show what is possible, then policy will follow.
"We recognise that, as Nestlé, we have more resources than other companies, so we should be taking that step forward."
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