Once a thriving UK industry, leather production in the UK had all but disappeared. So why are global luxury brands suddenly so interested in it again and what does it mean for fashion (and farmers)? Brodie Crouch investigates.

Not that long ago, leather was a fairly ubiquitous part of our lives and wardrobes, used for everything from sofas to shoes. The rise of cheaper synthetic materials and overseas textile manufacturing however, quietly changed that, wiping out demand and with it, the tannery businesses that converted raw hides into leather.

The result? Many hides in the UK are now either shredded, fed into biodigesters, or dumped in landfill. There’s a tragedy here in the waste itself, but also in the loss of jobs and a once vibrant British industry. There is also the sizeable knock-on impact on the UK’s local abattoir sector – a vital part of a secure UK food chain already in steep decline. Lose the abattoirs and you lose access to local meat, protected provenance and more local jobs – not to mention the impact on animal welfare when livestock are forced to travel miles to slaughter. Read more about the importance of why local abattoirs matter here.

Be all that as it may, industries and technologies change with the passage of time, and with it, the jobs we do and how we live – societies have never been static. We only need to look to AI to know that. Which brings us to the question of whether and why we should care about the decline of British leather at all? Is it an industry that has run its natural course and if so, why are luxury brands such as Mulberry suddenly fanning the flames of a revival? What would a revival even look like?

What we do know, is that British leather in 2026 still faces the same economic headwinds that first drove its decline. It also faces sustainability criticisms, not to mention its links to meat consumption. There are broader concerns too around leather in any context, with global supply chains linked to deforestation, poor animal welfare, toxic working conditions and climate impacts. A recent academic journal article published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering highlights that the global average emissions attributable to one kilogram of finished bovine leather product is more than twelve times higher than vegan alternatives.

But before you reach for that pair of pleather trainers, there is a more nuanced story to tell. What if we could create leather products in Britain made from hides that would otherwise go to landfill, with complete farm-to-product traceability, and where supplying farms maintained the highest standards of animal welfare? What if the cattle grazed species-rich pastures that supported biodiverse landscapes, and the resultant hides were tanned using traditional vegetable-based methods instead of conventional (damaging) chromium approaches? What if using those hides were to support a reduction in the climate impact of our food system, create jobs and support a devolved food and farming system that would underpin increased food resilience for all of us? Is it all an impossible dream?

“What if we could create leather products in Britain made from hides that would otherwise go to landfill, with complete farm-to-product traceability, and where supplying farms maintained the highest standards of animal welfare?”

Utilising a network of pasture-based cattle properties, a local abattoir, and a traditional tannery, British Pasture Leather (BPL) has demonstrated that this is in fact, already very much a reality. In a unique partnership with Mulberry, the leather is already being expertly crafted into high-end products in Mulberry’s Somerset factories.

BPL is not alone. Through their Service for Farms, any UK farm can have leather from their own hides, and Wiltshire farmer Andy Rumming is using leather from his beef cattle too, even offering on-farm workshops for people to make their own shoes.

The production systems from which these hides come are not new; rather they follow a style of cattle farming that has been practiced for generations in Britain: species-rich grasslands grazed by native breeds, interspersed with hay meadows, hedgerows and woodlands. The farms produce high-welfare, high-quality, grass-fed beef and premium value hides.

And the tanning process? Famously rich in toxic chemicals that pose a threat to people and planet, are heavy on the water usage and create plenty of difficult to deal with waste, the industrial leather process faces significant and justifiable criticisms that haven’t gone away.

In small UK tanneries such as Thomas Ware and Sons in Bristol (used by BPL) and Great Cotmarsh Farm in Wiltshire, however, things look rather different. Here hides are transformed by highly skilled craftspeople into premium leather using centuries-old methods. In stark comparison to the conventional chromium-based tanning approach that takes days or weeks, naturally occurring tannins from vegetable matter (like the bark stripped off branches) tan hides over a period of months. These traditional approaches also remove chromium from the equation, decoupling production from the problematic mining of raw chromium ores.

Separating supply chains – industrial from craft –and then communicating what that difference is and why it matters, is the next crucial step in this story if it is to be a successful one. Upon this narrative, rests the foundation for demand and justification for an inevitably higher price-tag.

Robust proof is equally crucial, and this is perhaps where the Global Farm Metric can really make a difference: a measurement framework that allows us to look more accurately at the environmental and social sustainability of different farming practices. In the context of a re-emergent leather industry, this would help brands to source traceable leather from farms demonstrating positive outcomes for biodiversity, animal welfare and climate. The proof not only justifies the price tag, but will only become more important as scrutiny over sustainable sourcing increases, both in fashion and beyond. It is only with such evidence that that this British leather will be able to show its true value, and convince the buying public that this is a product that they can both invest and trust in.

Find out more about British Pasture Leather here. And for more about local abattoirs and why we need to protect their future, click here.  

Solutions for Local Slaughter: Small Abattoirs in Local Meat Supply Chains – Groundswell 2026

The Sustainable Food Trust organised a session at Groundswell 2026 – ‘Solutions for Local Slaughter: Small Abattoirs in Local Meat Supply Chains’. Chaired by SFT Head of Policy and Campaigns, Megan Perry, the panel featured experts from across the sector:

• Eleanor O’Brien, Managing Director of National Craft Butchers
• Kevin Maher, Head of Operations, Food Standards Agency (FSA)
• Claire White, Senior Veterinary Advisor, NFU
• Phil Gordon-Jones, Manager, Fir Farm
• Tom Bowling, Owner, Edge and Sons Abattoir
• Andy Gray, small/mobile abattoir consultant

The well-attended session involved break out groups for in depth discussion and questions with the speakers. The following anonymised summary brings together the key questions and discussion points made during these breakouts.

Summary

Setting up an abattoir

• How hard is it to achieve? Key challenges include financial viability, staffing and managing by-products and wastewater (see below for more detail). The question of how to finance a new project must be looked at closely and with legal advice as there can be issues surrounding this. Drawing on the expertise of those in the industry, including trade associations, consultants and the FSA, is crucial. Establishing that there is a clear need for the abattoir is also a critical first step. Deciding on the size of the abattoir will depend on demand, species, number and availability of slaughtermen and their capability.
• Economic factors to consider: Speakers made clear that an abattoir must run efficiently and that comes at a cost – the farmers who will use the abattoir must be prepared to pay full market value for the service, otherwise the abattoir simply won’t be viable. Running an abattoir is different from a farm business with its own core product. You must be prepared to work extremely hard. There are busy periods (autumn through to December, for instance) and quiet periods, and you need to keep the business ticking over through both.

 

Finance and business structure

• What type of business structure works best? That depends on your business model. If you are focused on community benefit rather than profit, a CIC is probably the structure you’re thinking of — there’s a regulator you’d need to apply to. It works well for some businesses, including some farm-based ones. Equally, a limited company with shareholders can work. There’s also a co-operative/mutual ownership model. It really comes down to your objectives, and taking independent financial and business advice is recommended, because there isn’t one straightforward answer. The NFU is worth mentioning too — beyond membership, they provide services, and there are some small funds available to support early feasibility work, which can help you through the early stages if cash is tight. There are also finance specialists such as Tim Field at Oxbury Bank who can help advise. Strict rules also govern how businesses can solicit investment from the public.

 

Funding

• Are any grants available? While the Smaller Abattoir Fund has now ceased, this was extremely beneficial and de-risked investment significantly – Andy Gray and Fir Farm both made good use of it. The Abattoir Sector Group are pushing for more funding to be made available in the future. Other potential options include the Levelling Up Fund, Farming Equipment and Technology Fund and Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL), which some groups are currently exploring.

 

Recruitment and training

• What are the issues with skilled labour? Training a competent slaughterman takes a long time (months to become basically competent, a couple of years to be fully proficient), and the sector faces recruitment and retention challenges. Apprenticeship schemes are being developed with industry training bodies to help address this. They need a temporary Certificate of Competence and license to slaughter. The challenge is getting people through the door in the first place (i.e. attracting people into the industry), the second issue is retaining the people you have spent time and money training.

 

Official Veterinarians

• How does official veterinary (OV) provision work for a small abattoir? Every red meat abattoir must have an OV present at all times when slaughtering, to deliver Official Controls (an inspection carried out by the vet and meat hygiene inspector). It’s rarely done through the local vet, as they need to be officially designated by the FSA to carry out the role. Historically, some local providers charged relatively high rates for this work; over the years, contracting arrangements have been modernised and consolidated, and prices have generally come down. There’s no fixed rota as such, but contracts are structured to provide cover, essentially, around the clock, and there is provision for subcontracting — so if your usual provider can’t attend, someone else meeting the necessary qualifications can step in. Recognising the right level of experience for this kind of work in a rural area, where caseloads can be quite different to elsewhere, is part of the challenge.
• Is there a vet shortage? There is not currently a shortage in vets in the way that was experienced during Covid and post-Brexit.

 

Regulation

• Can you say more about charges for Official Controls? There was a recent court case that’s given the FSA an opportunity to look again at how regulation and cost recovery for Official Controls is delivered proportionately. The FSA say they take seriously the principle that official controls and what they charge for them, should be fair and reflect what’s actually needed. It is worth being clear about roles: the FSA is the enforcement authority — they don’t set the underlying legislation. If people want to see the regulatory burden itself reduced, that is a matter for Defra and Ministers rather than the FSA. The FSA are often asked to explain and justify their own efficiency to ministers, which they do regularly.
• What about the alignment with EU regulation and the ‘5% rule’? A key discussion point was the EU-derived “low-throughput abattoir” derogation, which allows abattoirs to operate with reduced regulatory requirements (e.g. not needing an official vet present at all times), provided the combined throughput of such abattoirs doesn’t exceed 5% of national throughput. The UK has not historically been able to take advantage of this flexibility, and the sector has been lobbying for the 5% rule to be implemented in the UK. It would make a real difference for small abattoirs’ ability to grow and would give smaller operations flexibility to kill a bit more some years and a bit less in others, without immediately triggering the higher regulatory tier. The EU itself has reportedly been looking at raising its own threshold towards 10%, partly because they want the small-abattoir sector to grow. As the sector has consolidated, the abattoirs that remain could in principle do more, but the regulatory burden constrains that. It also affects related services — for example, private-kill services for farmers tend to be the first thing an abattoir stops offering when under pressure, which particularly hurts smaller producers who rely on it.
• Is there any prospect of a specific small-scale, low-volume allowance to be processed without full regulation? There’s discussion of something along those lines — comparable to arrangements in some European countries — allowing a small, defined number of animals (for example, a modest number of sheep) to be processed locally under a lighter regime. It hasn’t been secured here yet, but it is part of the broader conversation. The rationale for the current system is that approved slaughterhouses guarantee proper checks — animal health and food safety — and there’s understandable caution about diluting that as more processing moves on-farm.
• What about the potential for remote inspection technology and AI in reducing the amount of official veterinary time required on-site? It’s an interesting area, and one that is being discussed. It is possible that if more abattoirs are built in remote areas, this will make camera-based inspection more appealing, so infrastructure and appetite may end up developing hand-in-hand. However it is, of course, important not to compromise on standards while developing these technologies.

 

Mobile Abattoirs

• How mobile are they? Mobile units are, in reality, only as mobile as their hubs or licensed sites enable them to be. Mobile units still need to be licensed in the same way as a static abattoir, and each site the unit goes to also needs to be separately licensed and have the correct facilities, which can make being truly mobile a challenge. However, the new Orkney Tiny Trailer Abattoir (TTA) will likely be more mobile than previous models as it is smaller and primarily for sheep only.
• More about the hub concept: Orkney will be using hubs – sites that are licensed and have the correct lairage that the mobile unit will dock into. This can be simplified so that existing infrastructure such as sheds, toilets and offices (needed for vets) can be used. Water collection can be done with an IBC. Scottish government (Food Standards Scotland) have tended to be more relaxed than England.
• How long does it take to build? The time taken to establish a mobile abattoir varies depending on several factors including location, design, availability of parts and engineers, funding and project management. Fir Farm’s Mobile Slaughter Unit took 18 months for the initial unit to be built.
• How much does it cost? The Orkney TTA cost £100k, Isles of Scilly will cost around £200k and the Fir Farm unit cost £240k – but more was spent on lairage, chiller, etc. More funding for infrastructure is needed. Running costs vary but Fir Farm costs around £1,500 per kill day.
• What happens to waste and by-products? This is context specific and varies a lot. For example, Fir Farm waste is currently going as category 1 at 50p per kilo. Andy Gray is developing a fertiliser business that can utilise waste. On the Scilly Isles new sewage treatment works are being built which will be helpful for managing waste water from the abattoir unit being constructed there. At Fir Farm, underground pits are used to store the hides, which go to a local tannery. Hides and skins are a major challenge, but there are people working to revive small-scale traceable tanning in the UK, such as British Pasture Leather, which may provide more opportunities in the future.
• Do you need a vet? Yes, all red meat abattoirs, including mobiles, require an Official Veterinarian to deliver Official Controls.
• Can you get a return on capital when being run at capacity? This is unlikely but depends on throughput and hanging capacity.
• What are the regulatory issues of a mobile unit? Mobile units are regulated in the same way as static abattoirs. There is a difference between a fully mobile abattoir (like the TTA) and a mobile slaughter unit (like Fir Farm) – you will also need to think about regulation around butchery services, lairage, etc. Planning permission for lairage and a cutting room on-farm can be easier to achieve first, rather than an abattoir.

 

Casualty and emergency slaughter:

• What are the options for using meat from emergency or casualty slaughter? For casualty slaughter of fractious or dangerous animals — for example, difficult cattle or buffalo — there is a recognised route: the animal is shot in the field, then winched onto a trailer or into a box for transport to the abattoir within the required time window (two hours). Because the animal is shot and bled promptly, there is very little compromise to the carcase. Many slaughterhouses already have the facilities to receive casualty animals killed this way. It is important to note that this route is for acute injury or an accident — it can’t be used for a chronic condition such as long-standing arthritis; the animal must be genuinely unfit to travel due to an acute event.
• Is there any prospect of extending this to animals in the field with more general acute welfare needs? There is an ongoing conversation about broadening the ability to shoot animals in the field in a wider range of acute situations, since it is arguably a considerably better welfare outcome for the animal than transport followed by conventional slaughter — even accounting for how things look from the outside.

 

Poultry and game slaughter

• What are the regulations around on-farm poultry slaughter? Farmers can slaughter poultry on their own farm without a licence provided they stay within set thresholds (up to roughly 150,000 birds per year), and without needing veterinary supervision. Selling the meat, however, requires registration with the local authority, inspection of facilities, and evidence of appropriate training. Red meat does not currently benefit from an equivalent on-farm derogation. Game handling establishments operate under a different (somewhat more relaxed, but still regulated) set of rules to conventional abattoirs. Wild game such as shot squirrels or rabbits generally needs to go to an approved game-handling establishment rather than directly to a restaurant.
• How does the regulation work for game — for example, squirrels or rabbits shot on my own land? If you’re operating as an approved game-handling establishment, there are a fair number of derogations in place compared with standard abattoir rules — particularly around fur and feather game destined for local butchers. Local authorities generally have good, longstanding working relationships in this area, and the rules — while still rules — tend to be more relaxed, for example around inspection of shot game for signs of the shot itself.

 

North Cotswold Abattoir

• Will it serve only the local private kill market? No, North Cotswold Abattoir is aiming to do more than private kill. Their key challenge is ensuring market/slaughter prices work for farmers and supply chain.
• How are you setting up the structure for the Cotswold Abattoir? We have three directors and shareholders with equity shares.
• What financial advice can you give? There are two types of tax relief you can look into – 30% and 50%. It is illegal to solicit investment directly, so people looking to invest must come to them directly via the website. They’ve had 400 expressions of interest from a spectrum of people including local farmers and bigger investors.

 

For more information on setting up an abattoir, take a look at the ‘Playbook’ put together by Claire White which can be found on the Abattoir Sector Group’s website – ‘Small Abattoir Development Support’.

In the 1970s there were 2,500 abattoirs in the UK – today there are only 203. Wicked Leeks’s Anna Zuurmond takes a closer look at the ways in which farmers have been affected by the loss of their local abattoir, as well as what this means for consumers and access to higher-welfare, organic meat.

This article was originally published in Wicked Leeks magazine.

The number of abattoirs in the UK has diminished from 2,500 in the 1970s to just 203 today, meaning animals are travelling further and longer to slaughter and fewer farmers are able to sell quality meat direct to consumers.

A recent survey of over 850 farmers by the Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) found that many small farmers would struggle to sell direct to consumers if their local abattoir were to close – smaller abattoirs offer services like private kill, where farmers’ own meat is returned to them by the abattoir for them to sell.

In the absence of this service, many farmers would be forced to sell their meat directly into wholesale markets, which over 58 per cent of farmers in the SFT’s survey deemed to be unprofitable for their business; the knock-on effect then being that consumers have less access to quality local meat.

The survey found that, as a direct result of small abattoir closure forcing them to use larger facilities, 18 per cent of farmers have already been forced to sell off their livestock, and almost a fifth of organically certified respondents (19%) said they have had to stop selling their meat as organic due to lack of access to organic abattoir services.

Challacombe farm, based on Duchy of Cornwall land on Dartmoor, Devon, has 20 Welsh Black Bullock cows and 200 Shetland X Icelandic sheep, a small, hardy and non-commercial rare breed which they keep mainly to manage their land.

They use local abattoir Gages, just nine miles down the road in Buckfastleigh, for all of their private kill, and then send on the skins to Devonia Sheepskins tannery, a further two miles down the road and the oldest tannery in Britain, to be made into rugs.

“The only journey the animals take off the farm is to the abattoir, and we know exactly what happens to them,” said farm co-owner Mark Owen, who runs the farm with his wife, Naomi Oakley.

Meanwhile, 10 per cent of the 850 farmers surveyed travelled more than 60 miles with their livestock, and many voiced concerns about how, if animal travel time to abattoir increased, it would undermine high on-farm welfare standards, which consumers also want and are willing to pay more for.

“The local abattoir is essential. We take the sheep in the morning, in the afternoon the skins are ready to pick up. You go down there and you see how hard everyone is working, the care that is taken, nothing is hanging around for too long, it’s very quiet in the holding pens – no banging and crashing,” said Owen.

Challacombe Farm’s livestock is organic and 100% grass-fed, with welfare approved by ‘A Greener World’, a strict certification only given when livestock have all-year-round access to fields.

As a result of their local abattoir, which they travel to most weeks, and the tannery next door, Challacombe is able to sell skins and meat direct to people “who understand how we produce [our meat], the impact on the environment, and animal welfare”.

The Lang family, who have run Gages abattoir alongside Dartmoor Butchers for more than 80 years through multiple generations, explained how they offer a mixture of private kill to local farmers, particularly rare breeds, as well as selling local farm meat at their Butchers, and to Riverford.

“Obviously we have complete control in what we’re getting”, said the Lang family, “we didn’t want to start just buying in stuff. We’ve always done our own thing.”

Succession issues

One of the greatest challenges to both their abattoir and Butchers is staffing, particularly with finding young people who are interested, and the Langs said this is something that is “unlikely to improve”.

The average age of abattoir owners in the UK is between 60-70, and getting young people into the industry and succession planning has been a key issue for many small abattoirs, and a factor in the closure of some.

Everything from the lairage, where livestock are held in pens before slaughter, to moving animals and carcasses, makes working in an abattoir a very physically demanding role, particularly with an ageing workforce, even with mechanisation of certain elements.

There are specialised government-funded meat apprenticeships for roles such as butchers, meat processors and abattoir technicians, however between 2019-2025 only 22 abattoir apprentices completed their apprenticeships (just five a year) despite the fact that 82 per cent of abattoirs and butchers said they would welcome an apprentice according to a 2023 National Craft Butchers survey.

A big part of the battle, perhaps unsurprisingly, is making the meat sector an attractive place for young people to want to work, despite the fact it’s a highly skilled job.

Sarah Dyke, Lib Dem MP for Glastonbury and Somerton, who is responsible for securing a debate in parliament for small abattoirs, said: “There should be more on the curriculum on food and farming – all that connection with food, but with rearing animals as well.”

Perhaps abattoir trips for school children would be a step too far, but some kind of secondary school education on how meat is produced is integral to an understanding of food provenance as well as forming a surer route into the meat industry and its potential career paths.

Sheepskins for sale

The falling price that abattoirs get for sheepskins and hides has also been a key driver in small abattoir collapse. The Lang family told me that 15 years ago, you would get £6-8 for a sheepskin, whereas now you have to pay £1.60 per skin to have them taken away, whilst cow hides have reduced from around £45-50 per hide to £4-5 in the last 15 years.

Over this short period of time, skins and hides have gone from a valuable byproduct, that many farmers say covered the operational costs of slaughter, to an additional cost-to-bear for farmers, particularly as collectors and renderers charge small abattoirs more to carry out small scale collections of skins and hides.

The Langs commented on how this is largely a result of the Chinese and Turkish markets which account for 84 per cent of the value of all worldwide sheepskin exports, adding that, “There’s no UK market for it now.”

As a result of this cost, only around 1 per cent of UK sheepskins are believed to be used, with over 15 million discarded every year, and some abattoirs even paying for hide shredders to effectively dispose of it themselves.

Owen told me how people “absolutely love” their organic sheepskin rugs, produced at Devonia Sheepskins, one of few remaining of 21 UK tanneries; a small-scale example which shows how skins and hides could be viewed as a valuable and beautiful byproduct once again and help the meat industry close that loop.

This is before we factor in the other costs that consumers don’t see – all the waste, such as entrails, that gets sent to renderers to be processed into biofuel and pet food, as well as the compulsory staining and later incineration of certain parts of the animals for disease prevention.

Whilst it’s not the loveliest conversation to have over your Sunday roast, it’s another reason, along with how an animal is reared, that a consumer may consider paying a bit more for your small-scale butcher-bought lamb that was killed in a small abattoir, rather than something that was both industrially produced and killed.

Support for local abattoirs

A huge win for abattoirs this year was the retention of the FSA (Food Standards Agency) 90 per cent discount on veterinary charges for small abattoirs – a massive relief when the hourly rate of on-site vets, who must oversee the abattoir at all times, increased by 17.7 per cent in 2025 alone.

Now the Abattoir Sector Group (ASG) are calling for more ring-fenced funding support for this sector.

This could include the reopening of the Small Abattoir Fund, a £4m budget opened under the conservatives, of which just over a 1m has ever been allocated, and has now been discontinued.

This is particularly important in keeping small famers in business, but also in keeping prices of quality meat accessible for consumers, with one third of farmers surveyed by the SFT saying they will have to push meat price hikes onto consumers if slaughtering charges by the FSA continue to rise.

Sarah Dyke MP has said that the whole relationship with the FSA must go further:

“I want to see a marked change in the FSA’s relationship with these businesses. Yes, of course food safety is paramount but we’ve got to look at it differently. Small abattoirs do a different job to high output abattoirs. They deal with rare breeds, organic, bespoke slaughtering – that job needs to be recognised.”

She criticised the punitive nature of surprise arbitrary inspections by the FSA, and the lack of administrative co-operation in working with smaller businesses.

“You need big abattoirs for supermarkets and small abattoirs for small producers”, says Mark Owen from Challacombe, as a larger facility is not designed to take the 2-3 animals that he’ll bring to slaughter.

This debate becomes paramount as we see an influx of international trade deals on meat, including a trade deal with the US that will lift tariffs and open up the UK market to US beef, whilst ASDA has proudly started stocking Uruguayan beef.

These threaten to undercut the prices of UK meat, just as milk and butter imports did in late autumn last year, causing a tumbling farmgate price, and many consumers unknowingly buying US butter and milk from supermarkets.

It’s therefore all the more integral that we support our local infrastructure – from farm to abattoir, to butcher, to tannery – and ensure that the small businesses working together to provide consumers with high-welfare British meat will not become a figment of the past.

 

To find out more about the SFT’s work with local abattoirs, click here.

Featured image by Christian Kay.

Bonnie Welch, Head of Projects, and Megan Perry, Head of Policy and Campaigns, reflect on this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference. Attending alongside colleagues from the Sustainable Food Trust and Global Farm Metric teams, they capture the energy, ideas and practical insights that emerged from sessions, workshops and conversations across ORFC.

The SFT’s Senior Research Officer, Imogen Crossland, highlights the case study farmers featured in our Abattoir Users Survey 2025 report, which provide tangible examples of how abattoirs support diversification, profitability and resilience for farm businesses.

Concerns are growing around the provenance, ethics and sustainability of meat. For those who choose to eat it, knowing how and where the animals have been reared is increasingly important, especially as the environmental, animal welfare and human health consequences of industrial livestock production continue to be made clear. But the opportunity to choose traceable, locally sourced meat is under threat. Across the country, small abattoirs are closing at an alarming rate, with serious knock-on effects for farmers, local retailers and the communities they serve.

Earlier this year the Sustainable Food Trust, alongside the Soil Association and Rare Breeds Survival Trust, surveyed 850 livestock farmers across the UK, many of them operating agroecological systems with native breeds, to understand the importance of small, local abattoirs for their businesses. We asked what the impact might be of further abattoir closures, rising slaughter costs and the loss of key services often provided by smaller abattoirs, such as provision for particular breeds and species, or ‘private kill’, where the meat is returned to the producer to be sold directly to customers.

While the results revealed the importance of local abattoirs for livestock farms of all shapes and sizes, the dependency was greater for some than others, especially among those supplying local markets. If their abattoir were to close, 43% of farmers said they would no longer be able to sell their meat locally, while 29% would consider shutting their meat business altogether. Sadly, the impact of abattoir closures is already being felt, with a third of respondents having seen their local abattoir close in the last five years.

More than half of farmers (58%) believed their business would no longer be profitable without the ability to sell direct or locally. For many, this is because selling through short supply chains, including farm shops, farmers markets and meat boxes, combined with adding value to their meat and other by-products, are integral to their business viability.

The case studies featured in our survey report provide tangible examples of how abattoirs support diversification, profitability and resilience for farm businesses.

Farm retail: Essington Farm Shop, Wolverhampton

Essington Farm Shop has been retailing quality home-grown produce since 1892. Its award-winning butchery and deli are central to the business, accounting for more than half of its annual turnover.

The farm shop has seen steady growth, with butchery sales rising by 10% year-on-year.

Much of this success is attributed to growing customer concern about how meat is produced, especially around health, environmental impact and animal welfare. Demand for traditional counter service by a butcher has also increased, driven both by renewed interest in home cooking and the limited choice of pre-packed meat products in supermarkets.

Access to their local abattoir is fundamental to the continuing success of Essington Farm’s retail operations. Pigs and cattle reared on the farm, alongside livestock from neighbouring farms, are slaughtered there before the carcases are returned to the butchery for processing. If the abattoir were to close, the impact would be severe, risking the loss of around £2.25 million worth of sales and over 20 redundancies. Essington Farm would effectively lose its ability to meet the strong demand for high-welfare, local meat among the community.

Guest writer, Anna Zuurmond, shares what her experience as a sales rep for organic veg box producer and supplier, Riverford, has taught her about our relationship to food and what people value most when deciding what to eat and where they source it from.

At first, I thought that being a veg box seller might be a little samey, with your daily spiel revolving around nothing but leeks and courgettes. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong about my job, which essentially involves touring around the west of England and encouraging people on the street, in shopping centres and at food festivals to try a Riverford seasonal organic veg box (as well as fruit, dairy, meat and other items).

The wonderful thing about exploring people’s relationships with food is that it quickly leads into conversations around lifestyles – and therefore life.

From new parents to grandparents, to students, full-time workers and retirees, from young couples to widowers to single mothers and fathers, what drives people to stop in the street and say yes (or no!) to trying a box?

The answer, I have found in my many chats, lies somewhere between ‘fear of’ and ‘desire to’.

Fear and desire in food choices

There is a fear of what pesticides and herbicides are doing to our bodies and to nature, a fear of losing local farmers, and a fear of letting big supermarkets win.

Then there is desire: a desire to know how our food is grown and to explore new ways of cooking and eating, a desire to support farmers, a desire to nourish our bodies and to restore nature.

Easily first and foremost in my daily conversations, is the topic of health.

“I didn’t care about me but now I’ve got kids, I feel like I’m poisoning them when I read about some of the chemicals used in food growing,” said a mother of two in Blackwood, Wales, in reference to the many pesticides used in conventional farming. Another professed: “We believe my one-year-old’s eczema is linked to pesticides.”

If it’s not children, it’s often a health scare. “We’re diabetic and have been told to eat more veg,” said an older couple in a Bristol shopping centre, variations of which I’ve heard countless times since starting this job.  Meanwhile, a 24-year-old woman in Birmingham told me how she’s changing her diet to see if it helps her chronic fatigue, having tried everything else. Straight after, a new mum shared how she was weening her baby off breastmilk but would only move to organic unhomogenised milk.

Many people, when asked in the street, “Do you like veg?”, answer with a little laugh or a sigh and go “We really should do more”. Often people are trying to break habits or slip healthy options into busy lifestyles whilst navigating fussy children (or themselves).

You then have the pretty serious health fans – including those within the ever-expanding gym and dieting scene – who want to tap into the benefits of fresh organic veg (and usually some milk and meat too).

Next come those with a desire to forget the supermarkets and say I stand with you to UK growers. People I speak with, are making a link between terrible farmer welfare, precarity and pay, and the food supply chain being orchestrated by multinational supermarkets. These people are also realising that much of what they buy from the supermarket is lacking when it comes to both taste and nutrition. They want out.

The environment, you might (or might not) be surprised to hear, tends to feature lower in people’s priorities. There is certainly frustration at supermarkets’ omni-present plastic packaging, and there is an understanding that intense monocultures sprayed with chemicals are wrecking nature and contributing to climate change. However, often fear of bad health is far more tangible to people than a decline in bees or soil degradation. What does that say about how we educate and campaign? That we must better teach the overlap: health and nature benefits are inseparable.

For most people, it’s not some great aggrandising idea of ethical, sustainable food that motivates them to switch to an organic veg box, but the appetite for something healthy and convenient that makes them feel good. Is that combination too much to ask?

Unfortunately, with the way our system currently stands, it can be.

The affordability question

So, let’s look at what stops people from switching to better veg. And I don’t just mean what stops people buying, but also what stops them even coming over and looking at a farm veg stand.

“I would love to, but I’ve got a family of five; I couldn’t afford to feed them this,” or “It’s just fancy veg, I go to Lidl”, are things I unsurprisingly hear on a regular basis. Comments along the lines of “That’s the expensive veg, isn’t it?” are frequently the first reaction before you even begin a conversation.

This response is entirely understandable – whatever way you look at it, and despite variations across products, fresh organic produce is often considerably more expensive than non-organic supermarket veg.

“Why is it cheaper for me to buy a crap ultra-processed meal than it is to buy this good quality fruit and veg?” exasperatedly asked a woman at the Cardiff Foodies festival. Her indignation at this imbalanced pricing is something we should all share.

As Patrick Holden, founder and CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust, has said, “We need to put right the price gap between quality and cheap food. We have a distorted economic system where apparently cheap food isn’t really cheap at all, because the costs behind it include contributing to climate change, destroying nature, negative effects on river pollution, reduced biodiversity and damage to public health.”

“Money is the only metric they accept, never mind the costs to our environment, wildlife, health and wider society,” says Riverford founder Guy Watson, in reference to supermarkets during the #GetFairAboutFarming campaign. These costs are not factored into price. Meanwhile, the benefits that healthy food delivers, are not renumerated.

Whilst this distorted pricing continues, for many people, the difference in cost remains prohibitive. Even for those that can afford organic veg, they don’t necessarily feel inclined to pay the extra money.

Bridging the knowledge gap

Last week, I had a previously homeless woman who had just been housed and set up with a bank card, who emphatically came over and wanted to try a small box every two weeks, telling me this was her first step in getting her life back on track.

These are the dreamy stories you want to be hearing, but they are often few and far between – and, to be quite frank, would take a great stretch of desire and finances for a lot of people.

For it’s not as simple as being literally unable to afford a £15, £18 or £25 seasonal organic veg box, but it’s a) thinking it’s worth it, and b) having the time, knowledge and skill base to know what to do with what’s inside it – which can include veg that’s less commonly seen on supermarket shelves.

“My kids just wouldn’t eat any of that, I’d end up chucking it,” families say to me daily, perfectly illustrating that scary possibility for many of throwing veg – and so money – away. Meanwhile, “How would you cook that?” is not uncommon when looking at a celeriac or a cardoon, or even things like broad beans or kale.

This ties into time. People get home late, work hectic jobs, some do shift work, and many have a busy home and family life when they get through the front door. Feeling confident and/or organised in your cooking, so that you can whip up something quick and healthy with what you’ve got, is not something everybody feels able to do. To tackle this, remember that you do have a lot of choice in what box you want, and in your first order with Riverford, you get a book full of simple seasonal recipes – and sometimes that’s enough to take a leap.

But the answers to making this widespread is of course a deeper-rooted education. Many I speak with are really keen to learn about how produce is farmed. They’re trying to dabble in a bit of growing, and kids will excitedly tell me how they’ve got some tomatoes or beans on the go in their back garden or at school. There are many working to bridge this knowledge gap, including the Sustainable Food Trust through its Beacon Farms programme, the Harmony Project through its work in schools, and Riverford through things like free recipes and newsletters.

If knowledge of growing and cooking can be expanded, alongside closing the price gap between low- and high-quality food, healthy organic produce could reach far more people while providing better returns for growers.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy the many anecdotes that the day job delivers. “Are artichokes anti-choke?” No, please don’t use it medically! “Is lamb’s lettuce vegan?” Yes…no lamb’s ears included! Keep them coming.

On April 4^th, the SFT participated in the launch of the Local Food Growth Plan. This plan was developed in partnership with the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA), Sustain, Sustainable Food Trust (SFT), Pasture for Life (PfL) and the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC), and was funded by the Rothschild Foundation.

The aspiration was to create a roadmap that will boost demand, channel investment and direct effort into delivering a thriving local food sector across the UK. There are huge benefits of expanding and strengthening local food economies. Firstly, these food systems are deeply rooted in communities and help build connections between people and their food producers. This creates economic growth and expands employment opportunities. Secondly, it tends to be more sustainable with fewer food miles and higher rates of agroecological production. This benefits the wider resilience of our food system, which is critical in light of growing global tensions and the climate crisis. Lastly, it benefits public health by increasing access to fresh, nutritious food so that all citizens can access healthy and sustainable food. You can read more about the benefits of local food in Richard Kipling’s article for the SFT.

In order to successfully grow the local food sector, this plan set out actions that require engagement from a range of people and organisations. Developed through research and a consultation process, this report contains detailed recommendations and seven key priorities.

Seven priorities for a thriving local food sector

1. Establish regional local food growth plans: These documents would be guiding principles to inform and advance the expansion of local food within a region. They would be agreed with stakeholders from across the community, ranging from politicians to farmers, businesses and NGOs, and include a strong voice from citizens, and would direct investment and development in the local food sector.
2. Enable and invest in policies to support infrastructure: Both national and local government need to invest and support the infrastructure that underpins local food. This means protecting and expanding local markets and increasing regional processing facilities and mid-scale infrastructure. For example, protecting small abattoirs to enable small-scale local meat production to continue. The campaign to protect small-scale abattoirs is a long-running campaign of the SFT and you can learn more about it here.
3. Prioritise horticulture support in a national Horticulture Strategy: Defra has been promising to deliver a Horticulture Strategy for years now without any progress. This document would act as a clear commitment from Government that they valued British horticulture and were committed to increasing the supply, processing and distribution of fruit and vegetables to improve public diets through healthy, affordable and climate-friendly food.
4. Create a roadmap for meeting the commitment to public sector food procurement standards: The Government has made a strong commitment to increase the target of local and agroecological food in public procurement. But, to achieve that goal of 50%, supporting policies need to be put in place that can provide the necessary support to SMEs to submit bids, along with data collection and monitoring to ensure that the targets are met.

5. Enable decisive action to make food supply chains fairer for farmers: Part of the challenge for small and local suppliers is that the system is rigged against them. Large retailers hold too much power. The food supply chain needs to have greater transparency and accountability to ensure fairness. This requires expanding and reinforcing the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator and Food Crime Unit.
6. Recognise the vital role of local action and networks: Local food works because it is rooted in community and listens to the voices of citizens. To expand local food systems, we need to ensure that sustainable food partnerships, are established in every area, to advocate for the needs of the local food sector and enable collaboration between local farms, supply chains and citizens.
7. Promote influential marketing, targeted business and training support to help the local food sector thrive: People want to buy local food but currently it is often too challenging. There needs to be an effort to promote and connect citizens with local retailers so that we can build a grassroots movement to expand access to local food for all people.

The full Local Food Growth Plan is available here.

So how do we make this aspiration a reality? How do we grow local food in our communities? To do so, we need to catalyse change within our political leadership, and we need local and regional authorities to commit to meaningful action.

A manifesto for local food leadership in Bristol

That is why a collaboration between local food organisations in Bristol (where the SFT is headquartered) have developed a manifesto for the upcoming mayoral election for the West of England Combined Authority. This strategic authority encompasses Bath, Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North East Somerset. Once elected, the next Mayor will have a critical role in shaping how food is produced, distributed and accessed across the region. Through adopting key actions, the region can deliver healthier and more sustainable food for all.

The group is calling for a strategic review of food access across the region to help ensure that local and sustainable food is accessible to all citizens in the region. This review should engage with civil society, businesses and community groups to co-develop a Regional Food Plan that strengthens supply chain infrastructure and improves food resilience. Similar work is already ongoing with the Sustainable Food Places programme. This would be a legal document and would be used to inform spatial development strategies, ensuring that food accessibility is embedded in planning, development and the management of council-owned agricultural land. Central to this document would be the evaluation of St Phillips Market, a local fruit and veg market that has been operating for decades and is critical for the collection, storage and distribution of local food. Ahead of any closure of the market, there needs to be a clear plan for its replacement to ensure a thriving future for SMEs in the food sector for years to come.

Once this document was approved, it would prompt the investment needed to make it a reality. Many groups in the region have been struggling to access the funds that they need to improve public diets and tackle hunger. Through the public commitments within the Regional Food Plan, resources would be unlocked to improve the access to funding for initiatives addressing health inequalities and climate change impacts through food systems, with particular support for small, community-led organisations.

Lastly, one of the key areas that sits within the remit for the Strategic Authority is skills and training. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity for the incoming administration to invest in training, career development and business support for those entering the sustainable local food sector, fostering new green job opportunities and supporting SMEs. Investing in the next generation of growers and food producers will help ensure the viability of local food long into the future and support economic resilience by increasing employment and regional growth.

Call for action: Better food for all

These steps are critical for the region to achieve healthy and sustainable diets for all citizens. There are approximately 150,000 residents in the region who live in deprived communities with poor access to good food. Many low-income families can only afford to buy cheap food, which is often high in fat, salt and sugar, and this can damage their long-term health outcomes. Worse still, this food tends to be cheap because it is produced in a way that is environmentally damaging. Industrially produced food fails to account for its true-cost to the planet – something Patrick Holden, the SFT’s CEO, has spoken out about recently.

Our dependency on cheap food and the inequalities in our food system needs to change urgently, and we need our regional leaders to act. All families deserve to be able to access climate and nature-friendly food that is affordable and nutritious and grown without harmful chemicals. The region is full of incredible agroecological farmers, growers and food producers that want to deliver sustainable food for the region to help meet net zero targets, support nature recovery and improve health outcomes.

So, will the politicians running for the role step up and commit to these five key asks if elected? We will keep you posted.

Read the full manifesto here.

SFT’s Head of Policy and Campaigns – and lead on our small abattoirs work – Megan Perry, explores the decline in people opting to work in skilled labour roles in the food sector, including slaughtering and butchery. From systemic shocks like Brexit and COVID-19 which have affected labour supply and demand, to a lack of funding for training, Megan takes a deeper look at the reasons behind this decline and what can be done to protect the future of the UK’s small abattoirs and butchers.

While many organisations are working to reconnect people with where their food comes from, educating children through farm visits and reviving an interest in food production as a viable career, there is an important part of the food chain that often gets overlooked. For sustainable livestock farming and local meat production to be viable, we need a network of abattoirs and butchers. However, the decline in people opting to work in the local meat sector and the loss of heritage and artisan skills such as butchery, has widespread implications for food security, sustainability and rural economies. This was the focus of a recent paper by the Sustainable Food Trust and the Abattoir Sector Group presented to Defra’s Small Abattoir Task and Finish Group.

The UK’s food supply chain contributes over £128 billion to the UK economy every year and provides employment for over four million people. The meat processing sector employs around 97,000 people and directly supports 50,000 farmers, with skilled butchers making up 40% of the workforce, according to the British Meat Processors Association.

However, according to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), systemic shocks such as Brexit and COVID-19 have affected labour supply and demand. The number of workers going into voluntary redundancy and early retirement doubled in recent years. In 2021, the impact of COVID was clear – there were 953,000 job vacancies in the UK, over half of them in the food and drink sector.

Estimates suggest that one in four food and drink industry workers are due to retire within the next 10 years, which amounts to over one million people leaving the industry. The BMPA has highlighted that the rise in worker losses has mainly affected skilled worker roles such as veterinarians and butchers. These roles are also some of the hardest to recruit and training is extensive and takes a long time.

Staff shortages have been a concern for some abattoirs, disrupting operational capacity and contributing to closures. National Craft Butchers’ (NCB) 2023 survey found that 20% of respondents had changed their business hours in the previous 12 months, with 22% pointing to staffing issues. For those looking to set up new abattoirs, the availability of staff can be a concern.

The average age of small abattoir operators is between 60-70. The NCB survey found that 56% of respondents do not have a succession plan, yet 50% were aged 56 or above and 26% plan to retire in the next five years.

Despite a clear need for workers in the sector, since 2019 only 22 abattoir apprentices completed their apprenticeship – that works out at about five per year, an all-time low. Only 33% of respondents to the NCB survey were currently employing an apprentice, although 82% said they would welcome one.

This problem is not helped by lack of funding, with Level 2 Butchery apprenticeships receiving £10k funding each, but only £6k available to the equivalent level in slaughtering apprenticeships. This makes it economically unviable for training providers, particularly if they must travel to remote rural abattoirs. Further, there is now only one training provider in the whole of the UK for smaller abattoirs.

“For sustainable livestock farming and local meat production to be viable, we need a network of abattoirs and butchers. However, the decline in people opting to work in the local meat sector and the loss of heritage and artisan skills such as butchery, has widespread implications for food security, sustainability and rural economies.”

There are many reasons why people are not choosing to go into a career in the slaughtering and butchery sector, not least because it can have a negative public image and gets little acknowledgement despite being an incredibly important and skilled role.

However, the decline of small abattoirs due to rising costs and a challenging regulatory environment means people are reluctant to begin a career in the sector, and family businesses are not being handed down. When we surveyed small abattoirs in Wales recently, one owner told us he had wanted to pass the business on to his son, but he felt it was not viable and his son had gone to work elsewhere.

There is also a disconnect between education, careers advice and staffing needs. With the Food Technology A-Level scrapped in 2016, there has been a lack of emphasis on food supply chain careers and training.

In our aforementioned paper on the skilled labour shortage, we reported recent conversations between the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) and a small group of young people under the age of 22 who are at the beginning of their further education and career paths. They highlighted how little the food sector is regarded as a viable ‘job for life’, despite living in an area dominated by food manufacturers, including two local butchers. They said the food industry was never presented as a possible career path at school. There was also an attitude that butchery was male-dominated.

However, some progress is being made. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE) are now looking to review the slaughtering apprenticeship and are positively engaging with the sector to get their ideas and input.

Some members of the Abattoir Sector Group are also holding conversations with educational institutions and experts to explore new ideas for connecting young people with the full range of career options. This could include better connections between agricultural colleges and the processing part of the supply chain, with livestock farmers also being able to train in butchery or slaughtering, if this was something they were interested in.

Ultimately, a resilient small abattoir network is essential for the future of local meat production. And it’s the unsung heroes who work in abattoirs that are providing the vital services that so many farmers, retailers, restaurants and countless other businesses benefit from.

For more information, please see our paper.

The Sustainable Food Trust is working to connect people with the story behind their food, including promoting careers in food and farming, through our newly launched Beacon Farms Network. We are also working as part of The Agroecology Learning Collective to signpost agroecological learning opportunities (including training and apprenticeships) and support the development of new courses which fill gaps in current training provision.

Continuing our ‘Learning Through the Land’ series, SFT Content Editor and organic grower, Alicia Miller, considers some inspiring initiatives happening in Wales that are opening doors to better, healthier eating through reconnecting schools and communities with the story behind their food.

As our diets in the UK are increasingly oriented around ultra-processed food, comprising over half of the calories consumed by adults and, more concernedly, over 65% of those consumed by children, there needs to be far more learning and engagement in what constitutes ‘healthy eating’. UPFs have become so dominant in our diets, taking up prime shelf-space and marketing budgets in the supermarkets for food that is inherently addictive. What is needed to counteract this is better education about what’s truly healthy and what’s not.

What can we learn by putting Wales under the spotlight? For several years now, change has been afoot and a range of varied projects across the country have been focused on ‘food education’, helping people – especially young people – to better understand where their food comes from, what the story of that food is and who grows it, opening doors to better, healthier eating. Alongside this, there has also been a push for more small-scale agroecological food production, which could be extended more broadly across Wales – while it’s still early days, there is wide interest in more localised, sustainable food production.

Food Cardiff to Welsh Veg in Schools

The work of Food Sense Wales and also Social Farms and Gardens has been a driving force in Wales from early on, focused on sustainable food production and healthy eating. These organisations’ presence and engagement, which started on a local level with a focus on Cardiff, fed thinking on a national level, with Food Cardiff seeding the wider work that is now beginning to expand across Wales.

Katie Palmer, Programme Manager, had been pushing Government to support a network of food partnerships across Wales to move towards local procurement. These efforts finally reached fruition with a pilot project sending Welsh courgettes into schools in Cardiff over the summer of 2023, as part of ‘Food and Fun’, a summer enrichment programme run in schools. To have opened a very heavy door – ‘local’ procurement is assumed to be almost impossible in schools across Britain – was a coup of sorts and the possibility of it being realised more broadly across Wales, is now closer than ever with the Welsh Veg in Schools project. Katie Palmer comments that “This year is really fundamental to us in terms of starting that process of building a movement [and] the movement is pretty big now.”

There is huge promise in Welsh Veg in Schools – with a focus on fresh organic produce, a big step forward has been taken towards healthy school meals. As Katie noted: “Organic is so central and key to this in terms of demonstrating and improving the benefits – especially in [relation to] biodiversity – of what we’re doing.” There are now seven local authorities participating in Welsh Veg in Schools which is currently focused on primary schools. Ceredigion County Council was coerced into participation by young students questioning why they weren’t getting the lovely carrots produced by the Sustainable Food Trust’s CEO and farmer Patrick Holden – nothing like a bit of agitating for tastier food from the young ones!

And the project continues to expand with a pilot in North Wales currently in development. It seems a sea change isn’t far off.

Small-scale agroecological farming sites with housing

Meanwhile, in Powys, there is also exciting work being done. A partnership, including Powys County Council, the Landworkers’ Alliance, Shared Assets UK, Cultivate (Powys Sustainable Food Partnerships), Lantra and a range of other organisations, are supporting the creation of four ‘micro units’ on a site in Sarn, Powys, under a 90-year lease agreement focused on local, agroecological food production. Powys has been lucky to retain a number of county farms, but farming isn’t a statutory asset in the county, so farms can be sold off when funds are needed.

Each unit is focused on agroecological food production in some capacity. Growers will be able to live on the land in off-grid homes (with generators) and are given access to six to eight acres each, which, crucially, they must farm in a way that benefits nature.

This is part of a bigger ambition that is being coalesced across Wales to have more ‘home-grown’ (so to speak), fruit and vegetable production spread across the country in varied locales, so improving access to healthy fruit and veg. In a country that is largely focused on livestock, it can be easy to forget the importance of local fruit and vegetables; a hundred years ago, almost every farm in Wales would have a patch of fruit and veg and some farmers would also have sales of these, off their land. Lantra has been doing a lot of work with farmers to engage them in growing fruit and veg – something that is also important for broader food security across Wales.

Getting people to eat their fruit and veg

At Bwlchwernen Fawr, where Patrick Holden farms, chefs Barny Haughton and Hazel Thomas, with funding from Ceredigion’s Shared Prosperity Fund, have been bringing farm-to-fork to life in meaningful ways. Across six weeks of sessions, they have worked to engage young people and their families, along with teachers and school cooks, to explore sustainable cooking and eating. This is about cultural change – introducing new foods and new flavours, like the surprising taste of a green bean off the vine.

So much has changed in school cooking, which is now mostly reheating and not cooking; food arrives pre-processed, pre-cooked and generally unpalatable. How do we reshape this into something delicious? For Barny and Hazel a key component is the story of food – there is an appetite, especially from young people, who are perhaps more interested and engaged than their parents, in where food comes from. The setting of the farm creates an essential connection in the farm-to-fork experience. The hope is that everyone who visits comes away with a deeper understanding of the story of their food, particularly the food they ate at the farm on that day.

The conversations at the heart of the sessions are really important and can sometimes be difficult, but this is how to change perceptions and get people to experience different foods which, hopefully, surprise them. That, in the end, is the way forward to healthier eating.

Beacon Farms

The SFT’s Beacon Farms programme is an ambitious project to engage farms across the UK to become literal ‘beacons’ of learning on food education. The farm experience is hugely important in connecting a wide public to the story of their food – whatever that may be. Farm visits and the conversations they generate can be transformative. At Bwlchwernen Fawr, Patrick and Becky Holden have brought diverse groups of people onto the farm to open dialogue across a broad range of topics and utilising the farm experience to enrich understanding of the value of healthy food and sustainable farming. These ‘hands-on’ experiences often resonate deeply through the people who have participated in them.

Food and farming education will continue to be a key component of the Sustainable Food Trust’s work in the coming years, with initiatives like those that have been underway in Wales serving as heartening example of what’s possible when it comes to inspiring people about the story behind what they eat.

Want to find out more about the Beacon Farm project? Click here to visit the project page.

SFT Content Editor, Alicia Miller, provides an overview on this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference, including one of the SFT’s sessions, Grazing for Good, which took a closer look at the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports.

Arriving into 2025 with the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), it has been hard to ignore what this past year has delivered in terms of climate change – 24 hours of rain in Dubai, a terrifying hurricane season in the US, fatal flooding in Valencia, Spain, heatwaves here, there and everywhere across the globe, and as an intro to the new year, Los Angeles is burning like never before. Twenty-twenty four was the hottest year on record; what will 2025 be?

So, being at the ORFC felt almost blissful – a momentary haven to talk with like-minded people and think about the micro and the macro, how we move forward in a rapidly changing new world and, most pressing, what we can do to fix it, if fixing it is even possible at this point… But hope remains our friend and that’s good to keep in mind.

As always, there was much to explore at the Conference with an array of workshops and ‘deep dive’ sessions arguably dominating the more academic talks on topics like Trauma and the Land and The Interbeing of Agroecology– not to dismiss those deeper discussions which are important to have, but perhaps ‘practice’ is having a moment? What can we do on the ground, in the day-to-day, to make change happen? Are we in a place where action speaks louder than words? That’s definitely food for thought.

In a session on Improving Food Resilience, food policy veteran, Tim Lang, discussed the findings of his recent research for the UK Government, with the panel addressing the critical question: ‘Is the UK’s food system resilient?’ Unsurprisingly, the general consensus was a resounding ‘no.’ The panel explored what resilience truly means in the context of food systems – essentially, the ability to recover from shocks, whether acute (like pandemics) or chronic (such as prolonged political instability) – and how it can be strengthened. The ‘just-in-time’ logistics employed by supermarkets faced criticism, with broad agreement that transitioning to a more localised food system could be vital to ensuring access to healthy and sustainable food in an increasingly uncertain world. Sustain’s Sarah Williams shared insights from the Local Food Plan (which the SFT is involved in), while farmer and GP Tom Pearson emphasised the importance of more farmers engaging with their local communities. The panel agreed that the proof of concept exists, but robust policy frameworks and a stronger economic narrative are needed to turn theory into action.

Following in the vein of Tim Lang’s thinking was a lively panel organised by the Eating Better Alliance. Chaired brilliantly by the organisation’s Sarah Wakefield, the panellists tackled the complex issue of dietary shift and implications for farming – a topic often mired by polarisation, which Eating Better aims to overcome. Holly Purdy’s Exmoor farm exemplifies the concept of ‘better’ meat, with her pasture-fed beef and sheep, and ‘more plants,’ through the introduction of a market garden and silvopasture incorporating fruit trees. Jimmy Woodrow at Pasture for Life highlighted the need to better account for the ecological role of livestock in regenerative food systems, a contribution that isn’t always “captured in spreadsheets,” while Julia Kirby-Smith of Better Food Traders brought in the perspectives of consumers and retailers, emphasising the system’s reliance on cheap food. Could True Cost Accounting provide the solution to rebalancing the system and demonstrate the far-reaching benefits of ‘eating better’? The discussion around barriers ranged from the lack of local abattoirs to the role of the media, and, once again, the panel agreed that getting people – whether school children or MPs – onto farms will be essential to shifting mindsets and driving real long-term change.

Also very interesting and relevant, was a session on pesticide use and its future, organised around organic beef farmer Denise Walton and mixed arable farmer Patrick Barker and how they manage their land. It was an enlightening perspective, especially from Barker, who while working hard to conserve nature on his land (and doing it very well), still uses glyphosate widely. It’s a strange disconnect – for Barker, it’s a tool and he doesn’t worry about it overmuch. But for most, if not all, agroecological farmers at the ORFC, it’s anathema. You can’t do both and his admission is at best problematic.

The Sustainable Food Trust’s session on Grazing for Good? Livestock and Biodiversity in the UK, chaired by SFT CEO Patrick Holden, included the SFT’s Senior Researcher Robert Barbour and Farmer Teleri Fielden, along with Molly Biddell, Head of Natural Capital at the Knepp Estate and Jo Riggall at Plantlife. It was an engaging discussion on the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports. Teleri Fielden made a strong case for the role that the mixed flock of cattle that she and her husband graze in Snowdonia National Park are essential in the wider preservation of the nature they support. Practices like rotational grazing and the inclusion of more diverse swards can help to mitigate the overuse of anti-parasitic medication which has significant impact on invertebrates. The reintegration of fertility building leys grazed by animals in crop rotations also offer significant benefits in reducing agri-chemical use. And there are many more sustainable practices that work to support nature and natural habitats in a variety of ways – it is possible to have a food system that works for “people, farm animals and the natural world”. Livestock, as Molly Biddell comments, is “totally critical for the health that their meat provides [and] critical for what they do for the landscape…” The session explored many of the themes that will be covered in the SFT’s next report, due out later this year.