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News

New tracker shows supermarkets are “blind” to methane emissions despite their major climate impact

Supermarkets are the net-zero anti-heroes when it comes to reporting on and reducing the super-pollutant methane, finds David Burrows

Supermarkets Climate change Environment and ethics Dairy Net zero
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Features

A sweet deal or impossible bar? How the sustainable cocoa alternatives stack up

Can a new breed of food tech start-ups find planet-friendly alternatives to our beloved choc bars? Megan Tatum investigates

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Features

Could fruit & veg vouchers bring a welcome boost to the organic sector?

It's difficult to shift people's food habits but a new card scheme pilot could spark real change, writes Nick Easen

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Features

The great British bakers driving the revolution for better wheat and real bread

What was once seen only as a cheap, ubiquitous commodity has become a point of proud difference for a new generation of British bakers, finds Tomé Morrissy-Swan

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News

How Big Ag tied “regen” to synthetic chemical inputs and shaped European farming policy

The same multi-billion-dollar companies producing synthetic agrochemicals are also lobbying for "regen agriculture". David Burrows smells a rat.

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Are Wildfarmed KitKats the future of regen farming… or its breaking point?

1.5 billion KitKats are made every year in the UK. A new partnership with British brand, Wildfarmed, changes the landscape, but to what end, asks David Burrows?

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Features

Still in the bag? Supermarkets stall on UK Plastics Pact target to reduce packaging for fresh produce by 2030

A target of just 30% of supermarket fresh produce to be sold loose may not seem overly ambitious, but David Burrows is surprised to learn that only one UK retailer has hit the mark

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Features

News from the farm: Steady as you go this November

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Stow Bedon residents take on mega-meat producer, Cranswick, over planning breaches

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Features

Understanding and tackling Britain’s nitrogen crisis

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Fertilisers are an alternative route to market for the major petrochemical companies and these profits are not going back into the UK economy. It’s an industry that has got away with causing huge amounts of environmental damage over the past century Natasha Hurley, Deputy Director of Foodrise

Features

A sweet deal or impossible bar? How the sustainable cocoa alternatives stack up

Sustainable Food Series Sustainability
News

New tracker shows supermarkets are “blind” to methane emissions despite their major climate impact

Supermarkets Climate change Environment and ethics Dairy Net zero
Opinion

News from the farm: Facing & adapting to future storms

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The AGtivist

The AGtivist: whistleblower warns of “complete supply chain collapse” as climate crisis escalates

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Opinion

News from the farm: Desperate drought to luxuriant abundance

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WL Meets

WL Meets: Martin Lines, championing nature-friendly farming as the resilient way forward

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Features

The return of Bluefin tuna to UK waters: a conservation success story or a species at risk?

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The AGtivist

British meat must have infrastructure, urges new coalition in support of local, higher welfare, abattoirs

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When we talk about climate change we often think o When we talk about climate change we often think of carbon dioxide emissions. There are ‘carbon footprints’ on some food packaging, ‘carbon reduction plans’ set by food companies, and a UK Climate Change Act that has legally binding targets to ‘decarbonise’ our economy. Greenhouse gas emissions are also measured in ‘carbon dioxide equivalents’, or CO2e.

But in the shorter term i.e. now – the greenhouse gas we really need to focus on cutting is methane: a super-pollutant which is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

Indeed, reducing methane emissions would have an almost immediate impact on the rate of warming and cut the likelihood of triggering climate tipping points. And this is especially relevant in 2026 – the year of the super El Niño which is, and will continue to, devastate food production with heatwaves, floods and extreme weather conditions, causing havoc for farmers and the food supply system.

What’s more, 49% of our methane emissions in the UK come from agriculture – burping cows and sheep, mostly, as well as stored manure, and they are forecast to keep rising. And here, if it’s even needed, is the kicker: even if fossil fuel production stopped today, food emissions alone could push us past 1.5°C temperature increase.

Methane matters, but what are food companies doing about it?

This is the question that the Changing Markets Foundation (CMF), an NGO, has set out to answer with its methane action tracker reports, the latest of which was published last week.

CMF’s Maddy Haughton-Boakes offers the top line: “Our rankings show that while progress has been made since our last report in May, there are huge gaps in methane action and reporting,” she explains, adding: “There is a real leadership vacuum amongst retailers, none of which even report methane emissions.”

Supermarkets seem “blind” to the measurement of methane, let alone its mitigation: of the 20 largest food retailers in the world the Foundation assessed, not one reports methane or has a reduction target; this despite 13 of them recognising the effect of the gas on climate change.

Read the full story on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
"Build first. Operate for years. Answer complaints "Build first. Operate for years. Answer complaints later. Then seek permission after the event.”

That is how residents of Stow Bedon in Norfolk describe life beside Cherry Tree Farm on their fundraising page. The farm is a pig unit permitted for up to 6,990 pigs. In 2023 the parish council said residents were complaining “almost on a daily basis” about the smell and noise.

Ann Cuthbert, 68, has lived in the village since 1991 and her land lies about 300 metres from the farm. Before dawn on 26 October, she says, the smell climbed from level three to level six – “extremely strong” on the intensity scale residents use when reporting to the Environment Agency. “This is not a complaint about an unpleasant agricultural smell,” she told the agency.

She says the noise of feed deliveries being unloaded sounds “like a pneumatic drill”, audible indoors, even with the windows shut, and that farm traffic is “much higher than we were told at planning application stage”.

The farm is run by Wayland Farms, part of the FTSE 250 meat producer, Cranswick. Earlier this year the AGtivist charted the march of the megafarms on Wicked Leeks, including legal challenges that stopped new units before they were built. Stow Bedon raises a different question. What can planning and environmental regulation actually do once a unit is already built and operating?

Read the full story from Helen Freeman at Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
We all take it for granted that when we visit a su We all take it for granted that when we visit a supermarket, or order our weekly shop online, the food we want and need will be available. With the exception of the early days of the Covid pandemic, which saw panic buying and restrictions on some goods, this is what, in the UK at least, we have experienced for many years.

But the signs that this comfortable status quo won’t continue are becoming increasingly obvious and alarming. Whether it’s dire warnings sparked by one of the lowest cereal harvests in recent British history due to this year’s intense heat and drought, or government campaigns encouraging us to stockpile bottled water and food amid growing concerns about the impacts of the climate crisis, risks of cyber attacks and threats from hostile states, these crises are now in plain sight.

During more than two decades reporting on the global food industry, the AGtivist has heard repeated warnings from numerous scientists, environmental campaigners, politicians, public health experts and many others that things cannot stay as they are without serious consequences. From clamouring around climate change, the destruction of ecologically-vital rainforests, the threat of growing food insecurity and the dangers of overfishing, the perils of antibiotic-resistant disease, the scandal of food miles and fossil fuel dependence, the scourge of factory farms, pesticide poisoning of land and water resources, the list is endless. 
Even some within the vast, sprawling food industry itself have begun to break ranks and raise the alarm; now, another food sector whistleblower has emerged, this time to draw attention to the risk of “complete supply chain collapse” due to the climate emergency, and the lack of awareness amongst most ordinary people. The insider’s account offers such a damning indictment of apparent corporate indifference and government inaction on this issue that it deserves to be read in full, and act as a powerful wake up call for those of us still in any doubt about what’s in store. 

Read the full feature - and the whistleblower's statement - on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
It is part of the wider supply chain that few of u It is part of the wider supply chain that few of us want to think about, but if we want to eat meat, slaughterhouses are a necessary component of the often long and complex process that puts beef, pork, lamb and chicken, amongst other meats, on dinner plates up and down the country. 

How abattoirs are operated therefore matters, as does who owns them and crucially, where they are situated. The number of facilities in existence is also important, particularly for those who rely on them to make a living, such as livestock farmers, and food and hospitality businesses.

But recent years have seen a dramatic reduction in the amount of slaughterhouses operating in the UK, with numbers falling from around 2500 to 200, and nine in ten believed to have closed since the 1970s. 

The reasons for this are manifold, including regulatory pressures and labour shortages. But chief amongst them is an increasing pattern of concentration and consolidation being witnessed across the meat sector as a whole, with fewer, larger firms controlling ever-greater swathes of supply.

As our anonymous columnist, the AGtivist, recently reported, startling new research found that just eight businesses now control about 70% of the UK’s meat processing turnover, part of a wider European trend that has seen a small number of giant, and frequently controversial, corporations come to dominate processing across the continent. 

Read the full report on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.

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Wicked Leeks is published by Riverford Organic Farmers.

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