Podcast by Footprint Media Group
08 July 2026
The annual Groundswell Festival of regenerative agriculture took place at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire last week. In this week's bite-sized episode, Nick shares his key takeaways from the 10th staging of the event which speak to the trajectory of the regenerative movement, the tensions that still exist within it, and what it all means for farmers and businesses. In particular, Nick highlights growing scrutiny over the relationship between more sustainable food production and healthy consumption amid passionate debate over whether it matters how ingredients produced in regenerative systems end up being deployed within the food chain. As one speaker asked provocatively: 'Is a regeneratively farmed KitKat too good to be true?'
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15:56
24 June 2026
As experts continue to question the resilience of the UK’s food system amid geopolitical turmoil and weather extremes, Canada has forged ahead with developing a new national food security strategy. The document explicitly positions food security as national security and sets out how Canada plans to assert greater control over its food supply through investment in domestic production and infrastructure. In this week’s episode, Nick is joined by Sid Mehta, an expert in Canada’s food system with experience working across the foodservice, policy and consultancy spheres. Sid provides the background to Canada’s food system and explains the context behind the new food security strategy, the political economy that has shaped it, and what it tells us about the risk of relying on others to feed us in an increasingly volatile world.
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37:47
17 June 2026
In Monday’s Footprint In Focus feature we explored the implications of a new government-backed plan to triple the level of surplus food being redistributed to those in need. The plan has been pitched as an opportunity to turn the environmental problem of surplus food into a social opportunity. But it’s also raised concern that food redistribution risks being conflated with food security amid a surge in need for charitable provision. The food sharing app Olio sits at the heart of the redistribution ecosystem. It enables food businesses to offer surplus food for free to people within their local community. In this week’s episode, Nick speaks with Olio co-founder Saasha Celestial-One to discuss the origins and growth of Olio, how barriers to redistributing more food surplus can be removed, why she fully supports mandatory food waste reporting, and why it’s important to be clear about the issues redistribution can and can’t solve.
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34:12
09 June 2026
The UK Government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 87% by 2040 as part of its seventh carbon budget. Yet comprehensive plans to decarbonise agriculture and land use remain conspicuously absent from policy papers, with food production on track to become the UK’s largest source of emissions by 2050. In this week’s episode, Ruth Westcott from the charity Sustain joins Nick to discuss why food and farming has failed to receive the same level of policy attention as the energy and transport sectors, and why farmers need greater support to produce food that is good for health and the environment. Ruth also reflects on why ministers are so scared to talk about the need for dietary change to meet emissions targets, and the kind of levers that should be pulled to get us eating less meat and dairy, and more fruit, vegetables and pulses.
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31:56
02 June 2026
The cold chain describes the collection of businesses responsible for keeping temperature-controlled goods like meat, dairy and fresh produce moving safely and efficiently through supply chains: from source all the way through to restaurant kitchens and supermarket shelves. Trade body the Cold Chain Federation is concerned about growing risks to the chain from a range of threats including targeted cyber attacks, extreme weather events and disruptions to fuel and energy supplies, all of which are set out in a newly released whitepaper. Yet there’s a strong sense that government ministers continue to turn a blind eye to the unique challenges facing suppliers and distributors of perishable goods that make up 50% of the UK’s food supply. In this week’s episode, CCF chief executive Phil Pluck explains why the cold chain is essential to the effective functioning of the foodservice sector and why it’s high time for a resilience strategy that protects against current and future risks.
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38:35
26 May 2026
Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions account for the lion’s share of the total for the average foodservice business. These are the emissions buried within food and drink supply chains that can be difficult to capture and measure in a consistent way. WRAP has taken on the task of creating a voluntary set of protocols for how food and drink businesses should report their scope 3 emissions. It has just published version 3 of its guidance that includes key changes in areas relating to the quality of data, what should feature within the scope of a company’s inventory, how to approach the task of rebaselining and, most significantly of all, how to account for emissions reduction from land use change and management. In this week’s episode, Hamish Forbes from WRAP joins Nick to cut through the jargon and give The Small Print listeners the lowdown on this next frontier in scope 3 reporting.
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