As food systems took centre stage at London Climate Week 2026, the Sustainable Food Trust was there to listen, challenge and contribute to the debate. In this round-up, the SFT’s Bahareh Sarvi (SFT’s Trials Data Manager), Amy Warner (Head of Fundraising) and Jessica Gunn (Director of Advocacy and Communications) reflect on five of the most significant conversations – from affordability and investment to regenerative agriculture and the rise of ‘Big Dairy’ – and what they mean for the future of food and farming.

The irony wasn’t lost on anyone: as the Capital sweltered in temperatures of 35C, scientists, policymakers, executives and activists gathered in their thousands to discuss the climate crisis. Newspaper headlines screamed “London Climate event on coping with extreme heat cancelled due to extreme heat” and “London isn’t calling, it’s cooking!”; it all felt very real.

London Climate Week Action 2026 was bigger than ever – reportedly surpassing even New

York Climate Week in the sheer number of events. There were panels, roundtables, big events and intimate gatherings across the gauntlet. The good news was that food systems as a topic was well represented from the Palace to Goals House. As ever, the Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) was deep in the weeds of it all, so if you weren’t able to be there in person – these are the five main things you need to know from this year’s event.

1.The affordability trap

The Economist launched its Resilient Food System Index, a serious attempt by a serious institution to hold companies accountable for food system performance. The Index presents four pillars of measurement and success – availability, quality and safety, adaptability, and climate and affordability. This all sounds very sensible, until you get to that last, despot of an argument that, in reality, has driven decades of soil degradation, biodiversity collapse and public health crises – here now again enshrined as a measure of success.

A UNICEF representative offered the most single, devastating data point in response: obesity has now overtaken hunger as the world’s primary form of malnutrition. Both conditions disproportionately affect people in poverty. Both are driven, in large part, by cheap food.

The SFT view: The race to make food cheaper has not fed the world or made us healthier. It has malnourished us – differently, but no less completely. Whenever a proposal emerges that might raise food prices, industry players (and Government) reach for ‘affordability’ like a weapon – and it works every time. Price has become equated with public good at the expense of every other measure of a food system’s health. Finding new language for this – language that holds space for both access and quality – is one of the most urgent tasks in food policy today.

Find out more here: insights.economistenterprise.com/energy-environment/resilient-food-systems-index

2. The investment gap nobody wants to own

Harry Farnsworth from Rabobank said something that should have made the front page: the climate is still not priced into the market. The reality of agriculture’s risk model still failing to reflect the environmental reality it operates within – global conflict, climate change, degraded soil, dwindling biodiversity etc, and the fact the margins on farming are already too low, means a sustainable transition is simply not investable at scale – unless someone steps up to take the first loss.

Two new funds have been set up to address this: a DEFRA-backed nature bond and a Wildfarmed initiative, both relying on government or philanthropic capital to absorb risk that private markets refuse to touch.

The SFT view: These are promising experiments. But they are two drops in an ocean that requires a tide. The food industry’s lobbying budget runs to tens of billions annually – while philanthropic capital flowing into food system change is measured in the hundreds of thousands. We are bringing a trowel to an excavation that needs heavy machinery.

Find out more here: https://uknaturefund.com

3. Net zero: A useful framing or a dangerous one?

One of the sharpest critiques to emerge across multiple sessions was directed at net zero itself. The framing, various participants argued, has created tunnel vision – a single metric absorbing all available attention, investment and political will, while biodiversity, water quality, soil health and community resilience, are treated as afterthoughts.

The SFT view: Net zero has become too narrowly focused on carbon. Offsetting has overtaken genuine emissions reductions, has inadvertently rewarded intensive production because it can appear carbon-efficient (see Big Dairy) while in reality still harming ecosystems. Measuring success primarily through CO₂ can obscure wider environmental and social outcomes. Instead, we need a whole-systems approach that integrates climate, food security, ecosystem health and long-term resilience.

4. Thinking in systems, not commodities

‘Regenerative’ might be a buzz word but how to define it? Discussions around the week confirmed the answer remains elusive. Regenerative agriculture however, many now agree, is not a destination, it is an approach to farming that by design is in constant motion. Regenerative wheat is classified as such, not simply because of how the crop itself is grown, but because of the barley, legumes and grass leys that preceded it – the label emerges from a community of plants (or commodities) working together. The whole farm system is the unit of analysis, and most of our financial and regulatory infrastructure is completely unequipped to handle that complexity.

The SFT view:  A true understanding of regenerative agriculture (or lack of) has profound implications for how we finance, measure, and incentivise farming. Supply chains that claim to support regenerative practice must begin investing in farmers to support the transition. This process must not simply be a matter of passing the cost to consumers, nor relying on government alone to bridge the gap. If a company’s share price was genuinely exposed to the climate risk embedded in its supply chain, that investment would follow quickly. The Regen10 Framework believes that ownership of the transition must not be a dictatorship; each farm and landscape is different and the challenge for each will reflect that. Our role is to define where we need to go, not necessarily how we get there.

Find out more here: Ture Cost Accounting report and https://regen10.org/outcomes-framework/ 

5. A big debate about Big Dairy

The SFT hosted its own panel on the rise of Big Dairy in the generously donated environment of Goals House. There was a diverse line-up of people in the room, with Patrick Holden at the helm. Against a landscape of the number of ‘mega dairies’ in the UK doubling over the last decade, while dairy farms overall have declined rapidly from 54,000 in 1974 to under 7,000 today, it leaves in no doubt the reality that the message to dairy farmers has felt like ‘go big or get out’.

Today 60% of the milk now consumed in the UK comes from Big Dairy, aka: ‘fully housed’ systems – and the public are only just waking up to this – helped by high profile campaigns from Project Sling Shot. High on the agenda was agreement that the dairy system is trapped in a commodity model that rewards low price above all else. Commodification has simultaneously dissolved dairy’s intrinsic value, and the sector’s control over its own narrative. Stronger storytelling around its stewardship, nutrition and security is vital.

The SFT view: we need a trusted, shared framework on measurement that rewards farmers for sustainable practices, higher welfare and ultimately, human health. The current system is optimised for a small number of actors – we need pricing mechanisms that serve farmers, the public, climate and food security.  Bringing people together from all sides of the debate is the first step towards a shared vision.

In a nutshell
What we need now is not more agreement on the problem, but rather the leadership – political, financial and institutional – to act on it.

This makes it all the more striking that London Climate Week generated very little mainstream press coverage. Thousands of people, hundreds of events, some of the most consequential conversations happening anywhere in the world about food, land, water and climate – and the national newspapers were largely silent. When the public conversation isn’t happening, the urgency stays trapped in the room. That, perhaps more than anything else, is what needs to change.

Image credit: Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash