Yorkshire becoming 'engine room' for farm to fork transformation

The project is aiming to make Yorkshire a beacon for moves towards regenerative farming and improving food quality.

Researchers hope the work will help also safeguard the country against threats from climate change, benefit food supply businesses and enhance health and the environment.

Prof Bob Doherty, academic director at FixOurFood, said the region was at the “forefront” of efforts to transform the food and farming sector.

It was well placed to deliver change with the highest concentration of food and drink businesses in the country.

“Yorkshire is increasingly the engine room for innovation and for food security in the UK,” he said.

A number of influential leaders across the supply chain from farmers to retailers have been appointed to a commission to ensure a legacy for the programme once its funding runs out in 18 months.

The commission will work with stakeholders to push for change in food policy, remodel supply chains and public food procurement, improve dietary health and support regenerative farming practices.

Chair David Kerfoot, former chair of the York, North Yorkshire & East Riding Local Enterprise Partnership, who has worked in the food industry throughout his career, said it was vital the programme influenced national policy.

He said “transformative change” was urgently needed to reorganise the food system to make it more healthy, affordable and sustainable.

“If we’re going to achieve this transformation, then we’ve got to hammer home to the government and to the regions that the system requires innovation in how we create our food and provide our food,” he said.

“We want to look at the way farmers farm to make them more economic and challenge the old way to make it healthier and better for our environment.”

He pointed to the problems faced by many local suppliers accessing vast public sector contracts which tend to be dominated by a handful of multi-national firms.

“Public procurement access is absolutely crazy,” he said.

“When you think of Yorkshire and the local producers of good quality food right across the board, many of them just can’t get into that supply chain in supplying a school or a prison.”

Ministers set out plans in last month’s King’s Speech to curb advertising of junk food to children and expand breakfast clubs in schools.

But the programme is calling for wider action to support youngsters.

It is working with school staff, children, farmers, caterers and academics to build a network of Yorkshire primary schools to make improvements to school food.

Researchers have devised a system automatically enrolling youngsters for free school meals amid evidence thousands miss out despite being eligible.

Commissioner Fiona Black, community and partnerships officer and food and nutrition teacher at Halifax Academy, said funding levels for school meals were less than in prisons.

“The food we are providing our children currently is inadequate,” she said.

“We need to make this standardised and we also need to realise the food needs to be better quality.

“These children need a good meal – a lot of them don’t always have that access at home.

“It’s so important to value our children enough to give them the food they need.”