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This suite of five short summaries examine the impacts Covid had on 5 key UK food sectors.  Based on interviews with key stakeholders and critical insight from the project’s Expert...

The brown / edible / ‘pasty’ crab   By Steve Guilbert Is there anything more evocative of the British seaside summer holiday than eating cod and chips on a windy,...

  By Tim Wilkinson The second part of the National Food Strategy was published on the 15th July in a two-part report: with one part proposing a set of recommendations (‘The...

  By Tim Wilkinson What are they? The last year has seen a dramatic rise in the demand for takeaways and delivery. A portion of that market is serviced by...

  By Prof. Michael Winter Sustain has issued a survey report exploring how good food enterprises have adapted to the pandemic one year on. Good Food Enterprises: Adapting to the...

  By Prof. Michael Winter  In recent weeks, the press has been full of stories about labour shortages in many parts of the food system. In another recent post on...

  By Tim Wilkinson and Matt Lobley Context We sent 4000 paper questionnaires to land managers in the South West in late October 2020; sending reminders and receiving responses until...

  By Caroline Nye* The Centre for Rural Policy Research recently published a new report, Farm labour in the UK: Accessing the workforce the industry needs, commissioned and funded by...

  By Prof. Terry Marsden* It will be important for the National Food Strategy to explicitly address and propose a new vision for British food and farming; to outline in...

  By Tim Wilkinson The Covid road map is very date based. 12 April. 17th May. 21st June. It doesn’t say anything about how those changes might be experienced. In...

  By Prof. Michael Winter One of the tasks in this project has been to keep an eye on what is usually called the ‘trade press’. And one of the...

  By Prof. Michael Winter Even in the best organised research project – and I am not claiming that epithet for our project! – it is  possible to miss some...

    By Prof. Michael Winter On the 7th April 2021, the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published a follow-up inquiry[1] to its initial inquiry in...

  By Tim Wilkinson The 12th April 2021 marked Step 2 on the government’s Covid roadmap, giving us further possibilities of a less restricted life. Hospitality businesses were able to...

  By Prof. Michael Winter These words are not mine but a question posed by Speciality Food on publication of the Commission report in March. Given the high profile of...

  By Prof. Michael Winter It has become customary for critics of the UK food system to attack the weakness and fragmentation of regulatory arrangements: too many government departments with...

  By Tim Wilkinson In Sky television’s humorous political thriller Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, while on a dinner date the protagonist Jack Ryan describes himself as being in ‘Supply Chain...

  By Tim Wilkinson We have previously outlined some of the challenges faced by wholesalers as a consequence of the pandemic. Although wholesale businesses were not legally forced to close,...

  By Tim Wilkinson The fourth Centre for Rural Policy Research South West Farm Survey went out in the post in October 2020 and we have a great set of...

  By Prof. Michael Winter No-one is in any doubt that the Pandemic has for many people changed where they eat, especially during the lockdowns, with home cooking and takeaways...

Spaghetti Junction UK   By Tim Wilkinson I don’t understand how the food system works. That might sound like an odd thing to say from someone working on this project....

  By Prof. Michael Winter In July 2020, the UK Global Food Security Programme and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council hosted a workshop with a range of stakeholders...

  By Prof. Michael Winter I don’t often watch football. I used to enjoy playing but that was many years ago and somehow I just much prefer watching rugby these...

  By Tim Wilkinson and Matt Lobley We have been casting our minds back to November 2020. It feels like a long time ago now. A lot has changed; and...

  By Prof. Michael Winter I suppose it is hardly surprising that most media attention on food throughout the panic has tended to focus predominantly on the retail and hospitality...

  By Steve Guilbert About this time last year, in amongst the usual ubiquitous year-end top ten lists and articles about trends we should be looking out for in 2020,...

  By Prof. Michael Winter Research results from other projects on the impact of COVID are beginning to emerge and this month I am highlighting a paper led by some...

  By Tim Wilkinson In the second national lockdown we saw food service and hospitality businesses restricted to takeaway only. The only option to ‘eat out’ was at outdoor street...

We launched our short Covid Food Business Barometer survey this month. It’s about how things are going for food businesses right now, what they think about the future and how prepared they...

  By Prof. Michael Winter Hasnain, S., Ingram, J. and Zurek, M. 2020. Mapping the UK Food System – a report for the UKRI Transforming UK Food Systems Programme. Environmental...

  By Tim Wilkinson In a month where Tesco’s posted rising profits, some of the economic impacts of the initial national lockdown are becoming clear. With local lockdowns now implemented,...

By Tim Wilkinson This month we have been working on designing a questionnaire survey for food businesses. Our survey is exploring the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions and the strategies businesses have implemented in response....

  By Prof. Michael Winter I found myself in Grimsby recently talking about meat! Well not literally on the east coast, for it was yet another virtual encounter.  The National...

  By Prof. Michael Winter There has been a spate of press coverage in recent days about food related issues and not all are about COVID impacts. The prospects of...

  By Veronica White I don’t know about you, but I was very happy when I heard that The Great British Bake Off was returning this Autumn. In this year...

By Tim Wilkinson With additional national restrictions, rising cases of Covid-19 and the prospect of a potential second lockdown, one has to wonder what the effect of additional restrictions might...

  By Prof. Michael Winter A meat theme to my blog this month and, in particular, a couple of stories that have come my way, one that shows that not...

  By Veronica White This month, I will finish my master’s degree in Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture, taught in part by academics from the Centre for Rural Policy Research,...

  Second of our Food System Impacts of COVID-19 monthly Project Bulletins is out now. Read, comment, subscribe here: http://sites.exeter.ac.uk/foodsystemimpactscv19/monthly-bulletin/

  National Food Strategy: Part One – an initial assessment by Prof. Michael Winter   This eagerly anticipated NFS report does not disappoint. As the report makes clear at the...

  The EFRA Committee’s COVID-19 and Food Supply Inquiry  has published its report.  It is the second major report on UK food systems/food supply to be published in two days...

  With an acute labour shortage in the seasonal farming industry and millions of people either out of work or furloughed, The Land Army was born with the goal of...

https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/partone/    

  Prof. Michael Winter OBE – Principal Investigator   I originally wrote the research proposal that led to the funding for this project in early April, at the height of...

The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Edinburgh is undertaking a survey to ask farmers their opinion on the challenges and potential solutions related to their business associated with COVID-19...

A research team from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Rural Policy Research (CRPR) led by Prof. Michael Winter OBE, focused on the management of the disruptive social and economic...