What do we (really) talk about when we talk about food?

The food system, we are told, is ‘broken’. The complex links between food system and major global concerns - climate change, biodiversity loss, malnutrition in all its forms, cruelty, injustice and suffering – have been forensically analysed, extensively reported on, and are increasingly well known. Everyone wants a sustainable healthy food system. But beyond the bland generalities, there is little agreement about what ‘good’ actually looks like, and how we might get there.

Why is this? In this talk Tara Garnett argues that our discussions about food pay insufficient attention to the fundamental and often very personal values and beliefs that shape stakeholders’ analysis of what the problems ‘really’ are, and their ideas about what we ought to do and where we want to go. Tara takes a look at these values and beliefs might be, argues that we need to bring them out into the open more, and (tries to), explore what the implications might be for policy.

About Tara Garnett:

Tara is based at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and is the Director of TABLE. TABLE, a collaboration between the Oxford, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University, is a global platform for knowledge synthesis, for reflective, critical thinking and for inclusive stakeholder dialogue on priority concerns and contestations around the future of food. seeks to facilitate informed discussions about how the food system can become sustainable, resilient, just, and ultimately “good”.

Tara’s work centres on the interactions among food, climate, health and broader sustainability issues; she has a particular interest in livestock as a sector where many of these converge. She is also interested in how knowledge is communicated to and interpreted by policy makers, civil society organisations and industry, and in the values that these different stakeholders bring to food problems and possible solutions.