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Features

Is hospital food the key to unlocking better outcomes for patients, planet, and producers?

The NHS serves 195 million patient meals every year, which presents an enormous challenge – and opportunity – for those pushing for positive change

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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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Mackerel is no longer sustainable. So, what fish can we eat?

As Waitrose removes all fresh, chilled and frozen mackerel from its shelves, Lizzie Rivera asks whether fish can ever be a sustainable choice?

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Poison for profit – EU exports 122,000 tonnes of banned pesticides

44 Highly Hazardous Pesticides, banned for EU use, are still being shipped to the African continent

Environment and ethics Pesticides
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News from the farm: Do we work for money alone?

Guy Singh-Watson News from the farm
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Where does Andy Burnham’s new cabinet stand on food & farmers?

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The UK birth, death, and rebirth of the local market

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Britain has had no shortage of food strategies, reviews, and commitments. What it has lacked is a durable framework that ties them together, ensures they are delivered, and survives changes in government. The Good Food Bill

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News from the farm: Impossible choices we’re responsible for

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WL Meets: David Wolfe, environmental lawyer fighting to save an agroforestry oasis

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Sustainable Living with Zac – How to grow a greener garden

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News from the farm: Longing for Devon drizzle

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Is hospital food the key to unlocking better outcomes for patients, planet, and producers?

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How venison moved off “posh” plates and onto the public agenda

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WL Meets: James Allen, reviving the art of vegetable tanning

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News from the farm: Healthy soil, plants & humans

Health News from the farm
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Have you ever wondered where we used to shop befor Have you ever wondered where we used to shop before supermarkets came along?

Of course we would have had the village stores, greengrocers, butchers, bakeries, and local shops, but there’s another place that most of us would have bought the bulk of our groceries.

Markets. 

Many people talk about markets when they go abroad – to countries where the market is still at the very epicentre of daily life – selling everything from a goat, a portable charger, or a tracksuit, all along a single street or square.

Most established towns in England began with a market followed by a place of worship and there are UK markets dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries. Markets led the way to shops, but remained the cheaper and therefore more popular option for hundreds of years – right up until the 1800s when some Victorian “markets remained important, but they were also sometimes seen as a problem, as they were noisy and smelly and tended to obstruct the traffic” writes Dr Annie Gray, for English Heritage.

Nonetheless markets lived on side-by-side with high street shops and a few developing chain stores, but the real nail in the coffin began in the 1970s and 80s with – as many Wicked Leeks readers will remember – the advent of out-of-town shopping developments and car-based shopping. 

Then in the 1990s, rapid supermarket expansion hit, and markets, along with high streets, declined with them.

The 2000s saw e-commerce rise, and we began to buy online and hardly venture into our towns – leading to “ghost” and “clone” towns where you’ll find empty high streets or just chain stores. 

Read the full feature on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio. It's a fascinating, hopeful piece.
Buying traceable fish caught in a low impact way w Buying traceable fish caught in a low impact way which pays and treats fishermen fairly is difficult, perhaps even more so than with farmed produce. 

Caroline Bennett, founder of ethical fishermen collective @sole_of_discretion in Plymouth, set up her fish delivery business in 2016 because of this exact conundrum: she couldn’t find any fish that met these criteria. 

Globally, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world’s authority on fisheries, 34.2% of all fisheries are overfished.

The UK is by no means exempt – with 27% of UK’s commercial fish populations “overfished to the point of having critically low population sizes” according to Oceana’s 2025 report. 

So, how can a consumer shop more sustainably for fish in the supermarket? “I just don’t think you can,” she responds. “Supermarkets are not buying off low-impact high social net vessels because they just don’t operate that way. 

“They buy on volume. Large trawlers and boats are remunerated for how much fish they land. So there’s no incentive to say ‘shall we leave that fish in the sea for tomorrow?’ ”

To many in the agricultural sector this “economies of scale” supermarket model of high volume, low margins, and hidden socio-environmental costs embedded in cheap prices sounds all too familiar. 

But fishing can be the wild west – out of sight and out of mind – and is far less regulated and closely monitored than agriculture.

One in five fish globally are said to be caught illegally or go unreported, according to the FAO’s alarming conclusions, and forced labour and human trafficking in fisheries are also major global issues in the industry, including in the UK.

Sole of Discretion’s ethos is that all fish is 100% traceable to fishermen and boat, uses only small day boats less than 10 metres in length, pays and treats fishermen fairly, and uses low-impact methods – which differ depending on the fish type.

Read the interview on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
Defra needs a “radical reset”, said Minette Batter Defra needs a “radical reset”, said Minette Batters in June. The department responsible for the environment, food and rural affairs lacks “commercial expertise”, the former President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) told MPs. 

“At the Cabinet table in the last Parliament, the previous Parliament and in this Parliament, food is not at the heart of Whitehall. It is not represented,” she explained, adding: “At the moment we are leaving Tesco to run the show. It does a very good job, but what if? Now we have to prepare for the ‘what if’ and you have to bring the food expertise into this.”

‘What if’ there was a new prime minister and fresh new cabinet, for example? And that is what we now have. 

Andy Burnham moved into Number 10 Downing Street this week, replacing Sir Keir Starmer, and has already appointed many new faces to Cabinet. This includes Angela Eagle, the new Defra Secretary of State, who in the past few weeks has boomeranged from Defra (where she was farming minister) to the Home Office (as Security Minister) and now – back to Defra.

That the Eagle has re-landed is welcome news for a farming sector craving some kind of consistency after years of inconsistency and inferiority. Eagle will bring experience not only of the department but the farming brief – which she is reported to have got to grips with quickly in her role as minister. 

“A familiar face means the industry won’t have to start from scratch in bringing a newcomer up to speed on the issues that matter,” explained Farmers Guardian editor, Katie Jones in her reaction to the news. “But stability at one desk means little if the wider picture keeps shifting beneath it. For now, much hinges on what the new Prime Minister decides to prioritise,” she added.

So far, food has not merited a mention (not even a mutter). Burnham has instead made (a little more) clear his intentions relating to water and energy as he takes on the cost of living crisis. 

Read our full breakdown at Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
If you want to see what sustainable and resilient If you want to see what sustainable and resilient organic agroforestry looks like, head to Wakelyns in Suffolk where 56 acres of trees, orchards, and crops are grown in balance, writes Nick Easen. At just over 30 years old, this is now one of the oldest and most diverse agroforestry systems in existence and one of Europe’s first.

This is an antidote to the industrial agriculture that blankets the east of England. Here lies an oasis of diversity, demonstrating that farming can do a lot better… even as, frustratingly, Wakelyns is now under threat. From a bird’s eye view on a hot summer’s day, Wakelyns appears like a green jewel among the toasted brown, commodity-crop filled prairies carpeting the horizon – its diverse plantings an antidote to the chemical-fuelled arable monocultures that have depleted soil, polluted water, and decimated nature for decades.

“I thought it was normal to hear turtle doves; there are three breeding pairs here. Then someone told me how rare they are. It’s then you realise how special Wakelyns is,” explains David Wolfe, an environmental lawyer, who calls himself the custodian of this unique site.

His life is woven into the very fabric of the place. This farm was like any other until David’s parents, Martin and Ann, purchased the 23 hectare plot in 1992 and decided to turn it into a test bed for new farming techniques. At the time, agroforestry – planting trees alongside crops – was experimental. Today it has been embedded into government policy – Martin Wolfe, an agricultural scientist interested in farming with low-inputs, was way ahead of his time. 

Head to Wicked Leeks to read the full interview - it's full of fascinating insights and inspiration. You can get there via the link in our bio.

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