This year, as recognised by the FAO, marks the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. Nowadays pastoralism is associated by many with idyllic ‘country life’. Here, Olivia Boothman uncovers its true meaning and origin, and what we could learn from pastoralist practices to transform our farming systems and to rebuild a sense of connection between people and the environment that supports us.

The BBC’s ‘Race Across the World’ recently featured an episode where the contestants traversed Kyrgyzstan as quickly as possible to make it to their next checkpoint. This contrasts with the intentional and considered journeys that are made across the plains and mountain ranges of Kyrgyzstan every year as pastoralists herd their animals to pastures new. What was portrayed well, however, were the idylls of rural life in this country, sustained by land-based activities. Two young men from Liverpool paid their dues for their overnight stay by helping with the walnut harvest, another team rode on horses to enjoy the vast scenery.

Pastoralism, etymologically, originates from the word pastor, meaning ‘shepherd’. But it has also come to be associated with idyllic ‘country life’. These days though, ‘country life’, in many people’s minds (at least here in the UK), is Hunter wellies, Land Rovers, black and white cows, endless horizons of knee-high golden crops and lambs frolicking in fields demarcated by barbed wire fencing – a far cry away from ‘true’ pastoralism.

Pastoralists are people whose livelihoods depend primarily on herding domesticated or semi-domesticated animals, which feed mainly on natural rangelands, often involving seasonal or regular movement between grazing areas, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

Since, it is no surprise that the FAO is urgently trying to protect them. This is absolutely essential, but more than this, should we be using this ‘International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists’ to think about what we can learn from pastoralism to inspire our own farming future?

Lebanon is facing a food security crisis. An over reliance on imports at the expense of investment in local food networks and sustainable domestic agriculture, has left the country vulnerable in the face of acute shocks. As conflict and climate change cause increasing turmoil and food security rises up the global agenda, Zeead Yaghi – scholar, writer and editor – explores why Lebanon is at such severe risk of food shortages and the lessons that can be learned.

Three weeks into the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, the second in as many years, its bombing campaign has unleashed a devastating humanitarian crisis. Over one million people from south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut have been displaced, and roughly 20% of the entire population have been pushed into emergency refugee centers.

Some refugees with enough means have opted to find housing on the private rental market, but the price shock driven by increased demand and sectarian anxiety over the displaced has left many unable to afford such alternatives. This has left tens of thousands of displaced people without any shelter and no recourse but to sleep rough on the available public spaces in the capital: the seaside corniche in Ras Beirut facing the Mediterranean, large sidewalks in downtown and the small scattered few parks across the city.

“Prior to the start of this war, Lebanon was already undergoing a severe food security crisis. Recent assessments by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimate that around 1.26 million individuals are facing crisis-level food insecurity (Phase 3), including approximately 85,000 in emergency conditions (Phase 4)…”.

Emergency relief efforts by the Lebanese government, local mutual aid networks and international organisations provide the displaced with shelter, medicine and especially food. This is occurring within the backdrop of Lebanon, which has undergone a series of economic and political crises that have undermined its already fragile and precarious food sovereignty and security systems.

Prior to the start of this war, Lebanon was already undergoing a severe food security crisis. Recent assessments by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimate that around 1.26 million individuals are facing crisis-level food insecurity (Phase 3), including approximately 85,000 in emergency conditions (Phase 4), highlighting the urgent need for humanitarian intervention. Refugee populations are particularly vulnerable, with significant proportions of Syrian and Palestinian refugees experiencing acute levels of food insecurity. In response to worsening economic conditions, displacement and conflict, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) have identified Lebanon as a major hotspot of concern globally.

This brings us back to the current moment.

Lebanon depends on imports to provide roughly 80% of its food needs. This model works as long as the global supply chain that provides the transport of food resources to the country, stays intact. Currently, the Israeli government has refrained from bombing the Lebanese International Airport and the Port of Beirut, the main arteries for food supply into the country. Should Israel strike these two sites, as it did in the early days of the 2006 war, rendering them inoperable, the country could stand to face a major food catastrophe.

Other geopolitical circumstances also threaten this fragile food system. The Israeli war on Lebanon is partly an extension of the current American/Israeli war on Iran that has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, all but blocking the transfer of oil, natural gas and fertiliser out of Persian Gulf states to the rest of the world. This has had the immediate cost of increasing the prices of these commodities across the world, and countries dependent on the oil from the region have begun to ration resources in anticipation of price shocks and further delays. The cascading effect of the blockade on the supply chain is the gradual increase in cost of transportations of material, not only oil and gas, but all supplies transported across the globe to astronomical prices, whose costs will be borne by the poorest nations and people across the globe.

“Currently, the Israeli government has refrained from bombing the Lebanese International Airport and the Port of Beirut, the main arteries for food supply into the country. Should Israel strike these two sites, as it did in the early days of the 2006 war, rendering them inoperable, the country could stand to face a major food catastrophe.”

Lebanon is already seven years into a large-scale financial crisis, engineered by its oligarchic elites, which liquidated the savings of the majority of the country and decimated the value of its national currency. The crisis pushed 44% of the current population into poverty according to a 2024 report by the World Bank, as well as driving the costs of everyday necessities into hyperinflation. Since the resumption of the fighting in Lebanon, food prices have gone up quickly in a matter of weeks, with foods like bananas jumping 41%, while the price of lamb has increased by 21%.

One week into the war, the Lebanese Minister of the Economy and Trade, Amer Bisat, reassured the residents that the country had high-level storage of basic commodities in flour, food and gas, insisting that food security was “safe for several months”. But that was early into the war and the situation, both in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, have escalated quickly with no end in sight.

“Since the resumption of the fighting in Lebanon, food prices have gone up quickly in a matter of weeks, with foods like bananas jumping 41%, while the price of lamb has increased by 21%.”

Hani Bohsali, the head of an all-powerful food import syndicate, told local television on March 23rd that although fuel costs have risen by 40%, it has only so far been reflected in a minimal raise in local food prices, nothing “above 5%”. There are, however, no guarantees that food importers will not use the opportunity to price gouge local consumers and drive an already anxious and destitute population into further poverty. The government has, so far, only paid lip service to a monitoring role to prevent importers from abusing their leverage, yet we have not seen any significant action towards that role.

Meanwhile, the Israeli onslaught continues to devastate the country’s natural resources. The Israeli bombing campaigns of 2024 and 2026, the use of white phosphorus, and targeting of agricultural fields in both southern and eastern Lebanon have destroyed and polluted precious important agrarian land which will take years to recover. Last February, Israeli drones sprayed pesticides over agricultural fields in southern Lebanon, and tests reveal the substance was glyphosate which destroys vegetation and poisons the soil. The purpose of Israel’s ecocide in these parts of the country is to both unravel the local economy and ecology of the region making it uninhabitable to its residents. Israel seeks to create a depopulated buffer 15 km into Lebanon up until the Litani river. By rendering the land unlivable this objective becomes easier. On March 15th an Israeli strike on the border of Chebaa in southern Lebanon killed two shepherds.

The immediate and historical circumstances of war, financial collapse and political deadlock, paint a dire picture for Lebanon’s food sovereignty and future food security. Unless there is an immediate cessation of hostilities which allows displaced people back to their homes and the implementation of a massive humanitarian relief campaign, the civilian population stands to lose most. Once, and if, the fighting is over, unless Lebanese officials implement structural changes to agricultural and economic policies that shift the country’s food regime away from import dependence towards resilient agroecological and sustainable systems, we are bound to find ourselves in similar predicaments many more times in the future whenever a geopolitical crisis erupts.

 

Featured image by Diana Salloum.

In February 2026, a new Prison Food Policy framework comes into force for all prisons across England and Wales. SFT’s Senior Research Officer, Imogen Crossland, takes a closer look at the framework and explores what it could mean for the quality and procurement of the food served in prisons.

For years, prison inspections have painted a bleak picture of the food served behind bars, with serious and wide-ranging consequences for those who eat it. Unlike schools or hospitals, prisons are responsible for providing virtually all the food that people eat, often for months or years at a time. What ends up on the plate, therefore, matters enormously.

However, for the past 16 years, the guidance available to prison governors and their catering teams has been shockingly minimal. A four-page document published in 2010 set out plenty of food safety regulations, but as far as the meals themselves were concerned, the advice was lifted from the ‘Prison Rules’ legislation written in 1999: 

“The food provided shall be wholesome, nutritious, well prepared and served, reasonably varied and sufficient in quantity.”

Unsurprisingly, this did little to guarantee a healthy, balanced and enjoyable diet for people in prison.

That may now be about to change. In July 2025, the Government published an updated Food in Prisons Policy Framework, due to take effect in February 2026. The new document is ten pages long, accompanied by a 106-page guidance manual. While the document’s length does not guarantee better food on the plate, clearly a little more thought has gone into it this time around.

Access to healthy, affordable food is one of the most pressing challenges facing our society today. At the Sustainable Food Trust, we believe that everyone should have the freedom and dignity to make positive food choices, yet millions are held back by a distorted pricing system that makes fresh, healthy foods more expensive than processed and ultra-processed options. Here, food policy expert, Honor May Eldridge, explores the history and politics of food vouchers, the growing potential of social prescribing, and the role farming can play in improving public health and wellbeing.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are not affordable for those who would most benefit from it. Healthy foods are nearly three times as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods. Often, processed foods are the most affordable and accessible foods for low-income communities to purchase while fresh produce is too expensive. In the Global North, healthy foods cost, on average, twice as much per 1000 calories than processed food. For many with limited resources to purchase food and other everyday items, price rapidly becomes the deciding factor and processed (and ultra-processed) foods are cheaper. According to an analysis by the Office for National Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, conducted by the University of Cambridge, the poorest fifth of UK households would need to spend 47% of their disposable income on food to meet the cost of the Government recommended ‘healthy diet’. For households with children in the poorest fifth of the population, 70% of their disposable income would be needed to achieve a healthy diet. This has significant knock-on impacts to public health, with healthy life expectancy in the most deprived tenth of the population, 20 years less for women and 18 years less for men, than in the least deprived tenth. It also has an economic impact since it leads to higher rates of sickness and inability to work, further compounding poverty.

Food vouchers as a tool for change

All citizens should have the freedom to choose what they want to eat and experience the dignity that comes with empowered food choices. There are two key approaches to making healthy food more affordable to low-income consumers. The first approach is food vouchers. Food vouchers have a long history as a policy tool to address hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity by giving targeted groups access to essential goods. Early versions appeared in wartime economies. For example, during the Second World War, ration coupons entitled households to limited amounts of butter, meat and sugar. Outside of wartime, voucher schemes evolved toward supporting vulnerable populations rather than managing scarcity. They became a common feature of welfare systems, used to provide nutritionally important foods like milk, bread or infant formula. In the UK, the Welfare Food Scheme (1940s–2006) provided subsidised milk and vitamins to pregnant women and young children. This was later replaced by the Healthy Start voucher programme that supports low-income pregnant women or families with children under four to purchase healthy foods, such as fresh, frozen and tinned fruit, vegetables and pulses, as well as milk and formula.

In the UK, one of the leading examples of food vouchers today is Rose Vouchers. Run by the Alexandra Rose Charity, it provides families with £4 per child (or £6 for children under one year old) each week, redeemable at local markets and greengrocers. This initiative operates in various locations, but in Tower Hamlets in London, they are committing additional resources to pilot how an increase to £8 per week with an additional £2 per household member, impacts the success of the scheme. Results after eight months showed that 90% of participants experienced improved physical health, GP visits were nearly halved and adherence to the ‘five-a-day’ guideline increased from below 30% to nearly 80%. Additionally, 75% of participants lost or maintained their weight, and over half reported improved mental health.

The politics of food vouchers

The history of food vouchers shows them as tools issued by the state or municipal government to low-income individuals, designed to alleviate poverty by tackling the hunger that stems from it. From their inception, they have been embedded in social welfare policy and are often associated with the political left, which tends to favour redistributive measures to support vulnerable populations.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the United States, which operates the world’s most prominent food voucher scheme. Food stamps were first introduced in the 1930s under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal but in 1964, they became known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which has since become a cornerstone of US welfare policy. Yet, more recently, SNAP has also become a lightning rod for political debate: advocates on the left point to its proven role in reducing food insecurity, improving health outcomes and stimulating local economies, while critics – particularly on the right – frame it as an unsustainable government handout that fosters dependency. This tension highlights the way food vouchers have become contested symbols of the over-reach of social welfare programmes and the role of government in addressing poverty.

Social prescribing: food as medicine

Increasingly, the preferred model of making healthy food more affordable and accessible to low-income communities is through social prescribing. This positions food as medicine, as opposed to a social welfare concern – citizens access to healthy food as a healthcare-based intervention that recognises the link between diet and health outcomes. In this approach, medical professionals, GPs, community carers, midwives and other frontline staff, are able to distribute vouchers specifically for fresh fruit and vegetables to individuals whose poor health is linked to diet-related conditions. The prescription is based on medical need, as opposed to income. The idea is that, just as a doctor might prescribe medication, they can also prescribe access to nutritious food, helping patients take practical steps toward better health.

The framing of subsidising access to fresh produce as a medical intervention, rather than as a traditional social welfare programme, makes the idea of social prescribing more politically palatable. By locating the intervention within the healthcare system, it is presented not as a handout or redistribution of resources, but as a preventative health measure designed to reduce long-term costs to the state and improve public wellbeing. This reframing is important because welfare-based food vouchers often carry the weight of political baggage: they are associated with the legacy of social assistance, poverty relief and debates around dependency. Social prescribing, by contrast, situates the intervention in a clinical context, where doctors are empowered to act directly on the social determinants of health. The outcome, however, is broadly the same as voucher schemes: both models aim to increase access to healthy food among low-income groups, thereby reducing diet-related illness and inequality. Yet, because social prescribing lacks the long and often polarised history of food voucher programmes, it appears less ideologically charged. This makes it a more approachable option for policymakers across the political spectrum, including those on the right, who may resist welfare expansion but can support interventions framed as targeted, evidence-based healthcare solutions.

Green social prescribing and the role of farms

The SFT is taking this framing even further, acting as a catalyst to inspire change. Since 2022, the SFT, in partnership with the College of Medicine and the University of Bristol, have run a pilot project to connect GP practices with nearby working farms, inspired by the belief that engagement with nature and food production can support health and healing. Framed as ‘green social prescribing’, the project uses nature-based interventions, like gardening or farming, to improve wellbeing.

Now in its third year, the project continues to work with several farms in the Bristol and Gloucestershire area, with six-week programmes in the spring, summer and autumn aimed at local residents from urban and other more deprived areas. Activities typically include farm walks, interaction with animals, foraging, wildlife identification, harvesting and quiet reflection in nature. The results continue to be positive, with participants reporting better mental health, reduced isolation and high enjoyment, especially from animal contact.

The project highlights the potential of farm-based social prescribing to improve public health and wellbeing while supporting sustainable farming. Given the proven health gains and wider social value, the next step must be to expand this model across the country, ensuring that communities everywhere can benefit from the healing power of farming and nature.

To find out more about the SFT’s green social prescribing project, click here.

Our recent Grazing Livestock report featured several farmers located around the UK who are taking a holistic approach to how they farm. Here, we take a more in-depth look at some of their farms and the benefits of a holistic approach to farming – including the integration of grazing livestock – for animal welfare, soil health and nature.

In our era of bitesize content, simple sells. Whether it’s a product or an idea, silver bullet solutions delivered with snappy straplines flood our social media and news feeds. The problem is that, when it comes to food and farming, these supposed solutions fail to reflect an infinitely complex reality, only serving to further distort the picture.

This is never more evident than during discussions about livestock. We often hear that animal agriculture is bad for the climate and for nature, yet the reality isn’t so straightforward. Recognising the difference between livestock farming that is part of the problem and that which is part of the solution, is a first step in moving towards a more holistic approach to our food system – one that grasps the interconnectedness of soil, plants, animals and people.

But what does this holistic approach look like in practice? Here, we share a snapshot of some of the farms featured in our recent Grazing Livestock report – farms where animals form part of a living system that operates within planetary boundaries while still producing the food that we need. Some of these farms are also part of the SFT’s Beacon Farms Network, which is working with farmers to harness the power of ‘seeing is believing’ experiences and, in doing so, build a body of informed public opinion on how our food is produced.

Hafod y Llyn | Teleri Fielden, Ned Feesey and Ianto Glyn

Teleri and Ned’s farming business is based upon producing and selling slow grown, pasture-fed red meat. The native breed cows are used for conservation grazing on various National Nature Reserves (NNR), Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC), whilst the sheep mainly graze the home farm’s floodplain rush pasture and are on parkland in the winter. The animals live outdoors year-round, generally in one large family group or ‘mob’, which has benefits for animal welfare, soil health and nature. Surveys show around 70 different types of grasses and forbs (flowering plants) per field, and nearly 45 different types of birds, including rare species. Grazing by the livestock also helps to control Himalayan Balsam, an invasive, non-native plant species. A ‘closed loop system’ is in operation, with no artificial fertiliser or bought-in feed crops required as the livestock feed entirely off pasture, shrubs and trees. Insecticides and anti-parasite drugs are not used on the cattle, and by checking animal dung for eggs, the need for wormers is reduced, the intention being to feed the soil microbiology with the livestock’s dung, as opposed to damaging it. Teleri and Ned are very lucky to have a local, family-run abattoir and butchery 20 minutes away, and they generally sell their meat locally.

Yatesbury House Farm | Richard Gantlett

Richard Gantlett is an organic and biodynamic farmer, with a herd of around 350 Aberdeen Angus beef cattle incorporated into a rotational mixed farming system, along with crops, including wheat, barley, rye and oats. The cattle graze on diverse herbal leys, containing up to 29 species of plants. These provide nectar for wild pollinating insects as well as the bees that provide honey for the farm. Richard has also embraced a ‘forest farm’ approach, allowing his cattle to graze the trees and shrubs on 64 acres of native woodland, which provides shelter from sun and rain. In return, grazing by the cattle increases the plant variety under the trees. The whole farm supports an abundance of species, from bluebells and orchids to hares, tree sparrows, corn buntings, quail and short-eared owls. One of the most important goals for Richard is achieving a ‘zero fossil fuel farm’ and he continues to find ways to work with electric vehicles as well as generating and storing electricity on the farm. In 2019, a Farm Carbon Toolkit audit found that the farm was sequestering 10 times more carbon than it was emitting. While this carbon balance is extremely positive, it was not initially a farm goal. Increasing the life in the soil, by growing diverse leys and grazing cattle, has been the route to carbon storing, nutrient cycling and water absorption.

Home Farm | Sophie and Tom Gregory

Sophie and Tom Gregory are first-generation organic dairy farmers. Their focus is on producing nutrient-dense milk from grass – milking a herd of 400 Jersey, Friesian and Shorthorn cows. They have been farming organically for over 10 years, motivated by animal welfare as well as the economics of an organic approach, but more recently deciding to take a step further in improving soil health by moving towards regenerative principles, including mob grazing and the introduction of diverse herbal leys. Alongside the benefits to the soil and biodiversity that farming regeneratively has brought, Sophie and Tom are especially dedicated to maximising the social value of farming in this way, something which is much harder to measure (see the Global Farm Metric’s website for more on measuring social outcomes). Part of the SFT’s Beacon Farms Network, Home Farm serves as an educational platform, regularly hosting visitors, from school children to farming discussion groups, in order to inspire more people to become involved in regenerative farming, especially those from non-farming backgrounds.

Edinglassie | Malcolm Hay

The name Edinglassie is derived from the Gaelic ‘Eudanglasaich’ meaning ‘steep grazing’. It is an upland estate with sheep and native breed cattle. Twenty-five years ago, Malcolm’s farm system was heavily reliant on artificial fertiliser, producing large amounts of silage to see their heavy continental-breed cattle through the winter. These practices, along with a succession of wet winters, resulted in damage to the fields, which sparked their conversion to organic and the use of native breeds better suited to the steep, wet ground. Edinglassie is a good example of a Highland estate where grazing plays a crucial role in helping to maintain habitats, including grasslands and wetlands of high biodiversity value. Well-managed grazing has enabled a wide variety of small plant species to thrive, many of conservation interest, without being outcompeted by more dominant, common species. The quality and diversity of habitats on the estate support many other endangered species, including birds like black grouse, snipe and curlew. Crucially, the transition to organic has also brought financial savings through the elimination of expensive inputs and breeding their own replacement stock, along with the premium received for organic beef and lamb.

Want to see sustainable farming in action? Join us for our Beacon Farms weekend event on 11^th – 13^th July at Holden Farm Dairy. The programme will include workshops, panel discussions and experiential farm walks, with locally sourced food and live music. For more information and to book your ticket, click 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.

The following is an extract from Marianne Landzettel’s new book, The Sustainable Meat Challenge: How to Graze Cattle, Slaughter Humanely and Stay Profitable. Here, Marianne writes about the experience of a number of farmers in Germany, who discuss the most humane methods for handling and slaughter, on pasture and amongst the herd.

A good life and death within the herd

Farmer Herbert Siegel had already found a way to slaughter his animals on farm, but the new EU framework and the guidelines issued by the state of Bavaria has made things easier. He has a herd of about 60 beef cattle, most were born on one of his pastures. He works with a trained hunter who knows the animals and they know him. That allows him to shoot from a very short distance. In the past, once the animal had been shot, there was a narrow time frame to sling a rope around the hind leg and winch the animal up so that it could be bled out in the slaughter box. The new EU framework and the guidelines by the state of Bavaria allow for the bleeding out of the animal in a lying position. For transport to the abattoir, Siegel uses a very simple slaughter box. It is a steel box with a lid and a grid onto which the animal is placed. Bavaria allows one hour for transport without cooling; in other states farmers have two hours.

On pasture, slaughter involves additional costs: for the hunter, for the vet who has to be present and for the butcher who has to sever the carotid artery of the animal. Siegel is lucky, his brother is a butcher and a community owned abattoir in the village of Seltmans is just seven kilometres away. In Bavaria in the 1990s, many butchers and small abattoirs in need of investment closed down. In Seltmans, 256 farmers from several villages came together and pledged to contribute financially to the building of a new facility, a statement of intent that meant the State of Bavaria would cover a large chunk of the overall costs.

Today, the abattoir is used regularly by 30 to 40 farmers. The only employee is a caretaker who is responsible for the upkeep of the building and for organising the schedule; farmers have to book the facility and bring their own butcher or team of butchers for slaughter and/or processing. The farmer members still pay a small annual fee, based on the number of cattle they keep. In this area, too, butchers are hard to find, but Siegel knows of several apprentices and within a 50 kilometre radius there are still six or seven abattoirs, he says.

Once the sides of beef have been hung in cold storage for two weeks and the cuts have been matured in special ripening boxes, Siegel posts online that he has meat for sale. Customers place their orders and collect them at the abattoir on a given day. Prices are ‘mid-range’ for organic meat, says Siegel; he wants organic meat to be affordable for anyone, not just rich customers. “The real problem is that customers only want steaks and a few other cuts. I can only sell about half of the meat that could be used.” For him, keeping beef cattle and slaughtering it humanely does not create enough income, he also runs a small car tire business in order to make a living.

Vets, farmers, butchers and animal rights experts agree: killing animals on farm, on pasture, among the herd and with a rifle is the most humane form of slaughter possible. But even under the 2021 EU framework, only animals that are out on grass year-round and not housed, not even in winter, may be slaughtered using a rifle. Animals that are housed over winter, or dairy cattle which may be indoors for calving can be slaughtered on farm, but they have to be fixated and stunned with a bolt gun.

Mechthild Knösel farms near Lake Constance and spent years trying to find a solution for on-farm slaughter. Knösel keeps ‘Schweizer original Braunvieh’, a sturdy dual-purpose breed originating from neighbouring Switzerland – the border is just a few miles away. The farm is part of Hofgut Rengoldshausen. The estate was founded in 1932 and has been run according to biodynamic principles from the beginning. It is now owned by a trust, overseeing educational facilities, research, and biodynamic seed breeding. The land is leased to several farmers who run independent businesses, producing fruit and vegetables, eggs and chicken. Mechthild Knösel runs a dairy herd and twice a month an animal is slaughtered for meat. She farms 220 hectares, of which 100 hectares are permanent pastures. The arable land is farmed in a multi-year rotation including fodder crops such as lucerne, grains and vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, beetroot and parsnips.

Knösel was born in Hamburg and initially wanted to train as a nurse. In the end, she felt she didn’t want to spend her life caring for sick people, but rather look after healthy, living, growing things. Going into farming seemed like an obvious career choice. She did an internship at Hofgut Rengoldshausen, became an apprentice, and after several years of managing different farms, took her exam as a master farmer. She didn’t necessarily intend to come back to Rengoldshausen, but in 2008 a farm position became available and she and her husband decided to take it.

In most dairy herds, conventional as well as organic, separating the calves from their mums shortly after birth is common. For Knösel, humane handling of animals begins at birth. She dreaded having to listen to newly separated cows and calves calling out to each other for hours on end, and she was one of the first farmers in Germany who decided to stop the practice. Two weeks before their due date, the pregnant cows join the mother and calf herd. In summer, the 62 cows within the herd give birth on pasture, in winter they are moved to a spacious calving box with deep straw bedding in the barn. All new mums stay there with their calves for at least two days until they have properly bonded. Only then will they return to the mother and calf herd. The calves stay with their mums for three months and are allowed to drink as often and as much as they like. Twice a day, cows and calves return to the barn. While the cows are being milked, the group of calves waits in a special pen with deep straw bedding.

After 12 weeks the calves naturally spend most of their time with their peers. They remain in the ‘kindergarden’ area of the barn and enjoy time with their mums twice a day when they come in for milking.

The Sustainable Meat Challenge: How to Graze Cattle, Slaughter Humanely and Stay Profitable is available to purchase at any good book store.

In 2019, we published our Action Plan for Greener Prisons report which suggested that increased access to nature, including horticulture and gardening activities, could improve the mental health and wellbeing of prison inmates. Drawing on this research, our Senior Research Officer, Imogen Crossland, explores the rehabilitative potential of growing, cooking and eating good food in prisons.

Food is an essential part of day-to-day life. We need it to sustain ourselves, both in body and mind, but it also serves so many purposes beyond this. Whether it’s the joy of sharing a meal with loved ones or connecting with our cultural identity, a good meal can provide a moment of comfort, even on the toughest of days.

For the nearly 95,000 people living in prisons across the UK, food offers almost none of these things. Reviews into the state of prison food systems have found shocking results. A report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) sums up the situation:

“… too often the quantity and quality of the food provided is insufficient, and the conditions in which it is served and eaten undermine respect for prisoners’ dignity. This does little to improve, what for many prisoners, is a history of an unhealthy lifestyle. It also potentially jeopardises prisoner and staff safety.”

While there is variation from prison to prison, some aspects of the meals are all too common across the prison estate. Lunch – often a sandwich – is served as early as 11am, and dinner (normally a carb-heavy hot meal), is served from 4pm. A breakfast pack (with a portion size described as being suitable for a small child) for the next day is handed out with dinner but usually gets eaten the same evening. Fresh fruit and vegetables are hard to come by and the snacks which are available from the prison tuck shop, or ‘canteen’, are mostly ultra-processed. Contrary to what many might envisage, most prison meals in the UK are eaten by prisoners alone in their cells. There are few opportunities to cook properly, and many prisoners will use kettles to cook their own food, which is not especially safe, and even fewer are able to grow food.

Some might ask why this matters at all – prison is, after all, seen as a form of punishment. The idea that poor-quality food should contribute to this punishment stems back to the birth of modern prisons in Victorian times. A principle known as ‘less-eligibility’ was written into the Poor Laws of 1834. It dictated that conditions in prisons and workhouses, including meals, should be worse than those experienced by the labouring poor, so as to disincentivise crime. While this principle has long been abolished, it remains ingrained to some extent in the public consciousness, fuelled by newspaper headlines about the ‘luxuries’ being afforded to undeserving prisoners.

“Contrary to what many might envisage, most prison meals in the UK are eaten by prisoners alone in their cells. There are few opportunities to cook properly, and many prisoners will use kettles to cook their own food, which is not especially safe, and even fewer are able to grow food.”

Reframing the role of food

In reality, transforming the role of food in prison offers significant potential to improve the health and wellbeing of prisoners – something which benefits not only the prisoners themselves but the entire prison service and society as a whole.

Simply improving nutritional intake can have a major impact, as three separate double-blind trials in the UK, US and the Netherlands have found. Providing a basic supplement containing vitamins, minerals and (in one case) omega-3 to prisoners, led to a reduction in the number of violent incidents of approximately one third, in comparison with a group taking a ‘placebo’ pill. That’s a staggering statistic which clearly recognises the links between diet and brain health – for which there is mounting scientific evidence. This is a potential solution which could be cost-effective for prisons to adopt now – but there are countless reasons why it’s worth going further than simply providing a pill.

While more difficult to measure, qualitative and anecdotal evidence is stacking up to shed light on the benefits of transforming prison meals, by offering more opportunities to grow, cook and connect with food, developing a richer food culture in prisons.

Making these kinds of improvements represents a serious challenge. For example, the list of available ingredients for prison food is determined by a single, national procurement contract for the whole prison estate, while the budget for prison food currently sits at around £3 per person per day, to cover all three meals. In comparison, the figure for schools is £2.65 per day for just one meal.

However, despite these constraints, the charity Food Behind Bars has been working with prisons and their catering teams to make meals healthier, tastier and more culturally diverse. They aim to scale their work up nationally, helping to reach as many prisons as possible.

“While more difficult to measure, qualitative and anecdotal evidence is stacking up to shed light on the benefits of transforming prison meals, by offering more opportunities to grow, cook and connect with food, developing a richer food culture in prisons.”

Food Behind Bars also run food education sessions and courses, from butchery to beekeeping, which help participants to develop skills, both practical and ‘soft’ skills like communication and teamwork. Initiatives like these, such as cooking classes and sharing meals around a table (something that many in prison aren’t able to experience), and learning how to grow fruit and vegetables, have outcomes that consistently report improvements in mental health, self-esteem, social skills and confidence.

We talk about the value of sustainably-sourced local meat a lot, but what about the value of by-products? Abattoirs once received £45 per hide and £6.50 per lamb skin but are now paying significant money to have by-products taken away. Megan Perry, our Head of Policy & Campaigns, explains how the value of hides continues to decrease while the costs of processing have increased, and what can be done to resurrect this dwindling sector.

While the importance of smaller abattoirs has begun to be recognised for their essential role in producing local meat, food security and high animal welfare, what happens to the by-products in such a system is little talked about. Rendering, tanning and incinerating are not generally hot topics of conversation! Yet the world of animal by-products (ABP) has a direct bearing on the local meat supply chain.

The Sustainable Food Trust recently put together a paper for the Defra Small Abattoir Task and Finish Group, co-chaired by the Abattoir Sector Group of which the SFT is a founding member. This paper outlined the stark reality of smaller abattoirs and how costs associated with ABP are impacting their viability. Animal by-products are the materials from animals that are not intended for human consumption and include products such as bones, skin, hooves, horns and blood, as well as whole carcases of animals that cannot be processed for humans. Products are categorised according to risk, and this determines what they can be used for. Some uses include rendering to form protein for animal feed, or anaerobic digestion to produce biogas.

Traditionally, the fifth quarter was a valuable source of income to the abattoir, often providing the ‘operating’ profit for the business. Abattoirs once received £45 per hide and £6.50 per lamb skin, which was enough to cover the slaughter cost. This has now turned on its head and abattoirs pay significant amounts to have ABP taken away, including hides and skins.

Most smaller abattoirs have their ABP collected and processed by rendering companies. Unlike larger abattoirs which have economies of scale, the amount of ABP from a smaller abattoir is relatively small and the abattoir is often located in a rural or remote area, and with the significant decline of other smaller abattoirs there is little chance of collectors visiting multiple operators in one go. This results in collectors and renderers levying high charges and leads smaller abattoirs to ‘bulk up’ their ABP into one container, meaning they are reluctant or unable to begin separating out the ABP for further processing themselves. The consolidation of the ABP processing industry has left small abattoirs with little or no choice as to which companies they use and therefore they must accept whatever the collector charges. This can amount to thousands of pounds per month and is often flagged as one of the mounting costs contributing to small abattoir closures.

Global markets and events have a major impact on the value of ABP. For example, prior to the war in Ukraine, Russia was one of the biggest importers of UK sheepskins. There are also major export challenges due to Brexit, where labelled hides were once sent to Europe on a trailer, there is now 40 pages of documentation to be completed.

Stringent regulation following the BSE outbreak led to the decline of many traditional uses of by-products. The categorisation of ABP and separate infrastructures for processing by category contributed to consolidation of the processing sector. We have been campaigning for the UK Government to apply to the World Organisation for Animal Health for negligible BSE risk status (rather than our current controlled risk status) and we are grateful that this is now being taken forward.

“The consolidation of the ABP processing industry has left small abattoirs with little or no choice as to which companies they use and therefore they must accept whatever the collector charges. This can amount to thousands of pounds per month and is often flagged as one of the mounting costs contributing to small abattoir closures.”

Potential new due diligence regulation, the Forest Risk Commodity Regulation (FRCR), could also have an impact in future as it will prohibit larger companies with a global turnover of more than £50m from using agricultural commodities that have not been produced in line with local laws. Companies will have to provide traceability and evidence that commodities have not been produced on deforested land. This will apply to both beef and leather products.

Reviving local and sustainable leather

While ABP processing represents an entire sector in itself, the production of leather is worth a special focus. The current situation has been described as ‘dire’ by those working in the hide sector. It is believed there were around 4,000 tanneries in the UK in the early 1900s but the sector collapsed in the 1980s with the rise of China and India providing cheap manufacturing and supply chains, coupled with rising costs of more stringent effluent regulations in the UK. By 1983 there were 125 tanneries and by 2015 there were 23. Today, just a small handful of remaining facilities have the capability to process raw hides and skins from the start, and a small number of additional facilities work with material that is already part-processed.

The value of hides has collapsed even further in recent months while the costs of processing (including salt, energy and transport) have gone up. Hides are a global commodity and UK hides currently must compete on a global market. There is a glut in hides globally due to the rise in plastic and other synthetic materials and perhaps also due to an overproduction of cattle, globally, through industrial farming systems. Over half of British hides and nearly all sheepskins are exported or thrown away. Even large abattoirs are paying to have hides taken away as waste, while small abattoirs are spending thousands of pounds purchasing hide shredders so they can be put into landfill.

There is also a huge disconnect between the demands on the fashion industry for sustainability and traceability, and how these are reflected in the leather supply chain. For most leather producers or users, it is not currently possible to trace leather back to the farm of origin or to know how the animal has been reared, and yet the desire for that information is growing.

British Pasture Leather have been working to address this issue since 2021, taking hides from certified Pasture for Life farms to create a supply of traceable and sustainable leather, marketed to designers and brands of leather goods. They also recently launched their ‘Service for Farmers’, offering to get hides vegetable tanned (which involves using natural vegetable tannins to alter the protein structure of the hide, rather than chrome tanning which is seen as environmentally damaging) and returned to those same farms as supple, fully grain quality leather, suitable for producing a range of products from upholstery to footwear. Adding value in this way could be an important part of livestock farm viability in future.

However, what is missing is the capacity to produce this leather in the UK at a volume and cost that would result in a commercially viable price.

“Over half of British hides and nearly all sheepskins are exported or thrown away. Even large abattoirs are paying to have hides taken away as waste, while small abattoirs are spending thousands of pounds purchasing hide shredders so they can be put into landfill.”

One of the main challenges British Pasture Leather is facing, is the bottleneck caused by diminished tanning capacity – the business relies on one tannery in the UK that can process their hides. The capacity of that facility is limited, which also makes the production cost high.

Improving local infrastructure is therefore essential to scaling up the sector. Alongside British Pasture Leather, a small vanguard of people are now at the leading edge of the revival of small-scale leather production, including Billy Tannery, who process goat and deer skins, and Cotmarsh Tannery which has been awarded funding to establish a micro tannery and teaching facility. But further identifying where there is missing infrastructure, particularly for the collection and storage of hides along with tanning capacity, is urgently needed. And British Pasture Leather feels that collaboration to use local hides in local leather production needs to be established to successfully realise this vision.

Alongside this, the founders of British Pasture Leather say that a mentality change is needed and that a vision for leather has to be married to agriculture and viewed from farm to finished material. The origin and production of leather must be better understood and appreciated. Good quality, sustainably sourced and traceable leather with a story, can advance a message about how we want to farm. Leather is emblematic of the agricultural system and landscape from which it came.

With major challenges facing both smaller abattoirs and livestock farmers, anything we can do to add value, improve viability and create a sustainable, local product will be welcomed. Defra have been willing to explore this issue and help identify solutions and we look forward to discussing this further through the Abattoir Sector Group in the coming months.

In a visit to Spain, shepherd Julie Baber meets fellow shepherds, David and Antonio, who farm in Castilla y León. They raise merino sheep for meat, but can’t sell the wool from their sheep due to a blue tongue restriction across Andalucía. The three sit down together to talk about their shared experiences, the importance of reviving the wool trade and the slowly disappearing practice of transhumance and its value to biodiversity.

“We’ve had 16 sheep killed by wolves so far this year.”

David narrowed his eyes beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat and scanned the plain of yellow esparto waving in the hot wind. The guard dogs seemed relaxed enough though, dozing in the sun, while the flock of Spanish merino sheep grazed in the shade of the scrubby trees that punctuate this vast grassland.

I had come to Cañicosa in Castilla y León to talk as one shepherd to another, to discuss the differences and similarities of our experiences, and hopefully to forge a mutually beneficial connection.

Driving out from Segovia that morning, with my just married daughter, Beth, who had arranged the rendezvous, I had been concerned that she might have ‘bigged me up’ as some sort of sheep and wool expert. However, as we bumped down the miles of stoney track to the meeting place, my concerns began to focus more on whether I would get my deposit back for the hired minibus I was driving! As luck would have it, the bus lived to tell the tale, and the shepherds immediately put me at ease.