Earlier this month, the EAT-Lancet Commission launched its much-anticipated second report at the EAT Forum in Stockholm, accompanied by significant publicity and widespread social media attention. Here, our CEO, Patrick Holden, responds to the report.

Earlier this month, the EAT-Lancet Commission launched its much-anticipated second report at the EAT Forum in Stockholm, accompanied by impressive publicity and widespread social media attention.

Many of my friends hold influential roles within the EAT Forum, and I was invited to contribute to their Farmers and Fishers Consultation. Yet despite this engagement, I don’t believe the final report sufficiently reflects the perspectives and lived experiences of farmers on the ground.

So, what do I think of the report?

Firstly, there are some important and welcome conclusions:

  • It rightly critiques the current food system, which is operating beyond several planetary boundaries.
  • It calls for a shift to food systems that are environmentally and ethically sound and recognises the critical importance of a socially just transition.
  • It highlights the need for financial support for sustainable agriculture.
  • It makes clear the need for dietary shifts in line with ecological limits.

These are significant and commendable. However, I believe the approach the report takes is fundamentally flawed, with significant implications for our understanding of what represents a truly sustainable approach to food production.

1. A top-down, diet-first framework

The cornerstone of the EAT-Lancet report is the ‘Planetary Health Diet’, a universal dietary template based on an analysis of the health effects of different foods. I have two overarching problems with this approach. First, while the report’s recommendations do provide some flexibility in food choices, I take real issue with the inference that diets that exist outside the framework EAT-Lancet propose are unhealthy. Humans are, after all, a remarkably flexible species, able to thrive on a hugely diverse range of different diets. There are also all sorts of things we don’t know about the health impacts of different dietary choices, including evidently relevant factors like production and cooking method that are often not even considered in diet health studies.

Second, because EAT-Lancet’s dietary guidelines are based entirely on a top-down reading of health impacts, they have not been informed by any analysis of what different regions can sustainably produce. This, in my opinion, is a major flaw that risks missing practical, on-the-ground farming considerations that are obviously fundamental to the question of what we can and should eat. Future diets should instead reflect the food output from truly sustainable farming systems – which will vary by region. In other words, diets must emerge from farming systems that work with nature, not be imposed upon them.

2. Lack of clarity on how we should farm

This brings me to my next concern, which is that the report is inconsistent in spelling out what changes to farming systems will be needed in the future. On the one hand, the report speaks to the benefits of adopting more ecological farming practices and produces some useful figures around the potential of these to reduce the global food system’s environmental impacts. It also contains some important criticisms of industrial systems. At the same time, however, the report’s top-line modelling appears to assume further increases in agricultural yields in regions where these are already high (e.g. Europe), and this can only mean a continuation of a predominantly industrial approach – the opposite of the ecological systems the report claims to be supporting. All this does in my opinion is contribute to the ongoing confusion around which farming practices and systems we need to support – those based on ecological principles – and the ones which we need to move away from, that are heavily reliant on fossil fuel and energy-intensive inputs.

Future diets should instead reflect the food output from truly sustainable farming systems – which will vary by region. In other words, diets must emerge from farming systems that work with nature, not be imposed upon them.

3. Meat reduction without nuance

All of this is relevant to the question of meat and dairy. EAT-Lancet advocates for a major reduction in meat consumption globally. Our own modelling in Feeding Britain also acknowledges a need to reduce overall meat consumption, as do other studies that have modelled the outcomes of a wholesale shift to more nature-based farming systems. There are, however, some important differences in how we reach our conclusions.

Our starting point was looking at how much meat and dairy the UK could sustainably produce, were there to be a nationwide transition to farming systems based entirely on agroecological principles. We found there would be a very significant decrease in pork and chicken production, due to their heavy reliance on grain and feed imports. When it came to beef and dairy, however, we modelled more modest reductions, and this reflects the key benefits grazing animals provide in a food system based on biological principles. For instance, cattle and sheep play a central role in supporting regenerative cropping systems that don’t rely on agrichemicals, help manage cherished landscapes rich in carbon and nature, and produce nutrient-dense meat and dairy from our extensive grassland area otherwise unsuited for producing food.

This is a pattern that other agroecological modelling studies have broadly found. The EAT-Lancet report, on the other hand, argues that red meat and ruminants should constitute a considerably smaller part of our diets and farming systems than poultry. This simply doesn’t tally with what a transition towards a more ecological food system would in reality support. All of this is frustrating, given the report does acknowledge some of the benefits that livestock can provide – it just doesn’t go far enough in linking our diets to them.

Of course, none of this should detract from the need to produce and consume a more diverse range of plant foods – something that we too modelled in Feeding Britain. But if those crops are grown in chemically intensive monocultures or hydroponic systems, they may be nutrient-poor, lacking flavour, and environmentally damaging. This isn’t the future we need.

There are always going to be differences of opinion when it comes to the future of food. That’s healthy. But given the EAT-Lancet Commission’s growing influence, it’s vital that these differing perspectives are heard and brought together.

To that end, I’ve made repeated efforts to engage with the EAT-Lancet community – even inviting them to my farm. When I challenged the top-down nature of their dietary recommendations during the farmer consultations, there was widespread agreement among fellow participants. Yet I don’t see enough of that reflected in the final report.

Let’s be clear: we all want a food system that is fair, sustainable and healthy. But to get there, we must bridge the gap between global frameworks and local, grounded farming realities.

I hope this intervention encourages more genuine dialogue, because if we don’t work together, we risk building solutions that sound good on paper but fail in practice.