Vicki Hird

Brexit, bad weather and rising energy prices have a role to play, but our UK growers have been left out on a limb. Like a glasshouse half empty, this crisis is exposing deep systemic problems in our food system that need addressing. Sustain takes a look.

There are exciting opportunities for using land on the edge of cities – the peri-urban (areas adjacent to urban settlements) fringe – to provide more agroecologically produced food and to connect urban and rural economies through food growing.

The truth is that bugs are exquisite in their evolutionary design and they should be able to exists for their own sake, not just for the value in service they give us. But they should be revered for all the vital roles they do play in keeping our only and shared home inhabitable.

Farmers in England and Wales want to move away from centralised supply chains where they say they have little influence over prices, not enough connection to consumers, and are not rewarded for delivering positive climate and nature outcomes.

As one of the most complex, costly, and widely disliked common EU policies, Brexit presents a once in a lifetime opportunity to end some of the absurdities and harm of the CAP – a system which has failed to support farms effectively, failed to stem the huge loss of farm diversity and failed to protect wildlife and services such as flood mitigation.

A trade treaty between the US and EU, which represents around a third of global trade, should be big news. And rightly so.