Juliane Caillouette Noble

Some real gems here: "As custodians of 3/4 of the UK landscape, farmers are our only hope of addressing nature, water and climate crises... food producers are the only long term solution to the NHS crisis as it buckles underneath an epidemic of diet related disease." "No economy survives the collapse of its ecosystems or the breakdown of its food supply because soil health is too compromised to infiltrate and store torrential rainfall." "The language of subsidies needs to be left behind. This is about redefining value and creating markets, something government is uniquely placed to do. There is a huge opportunity for the UK government to do for nature, water, health and climate what the German government did for solar power: unleash a wave of innovation, adoption and transformational change." Amen, Andy Cato.

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Yesterday I attended the Waitrose Farming Conference hosted on their Leckford Farm It was inspiring to hear about their commitments to source 100% of their products from regenerative agriculture by 2035, dedication to animal welfare, and desire to work with their farmers to make their goals of sourcing all their products regeneratively a reality. Why is regenerative agriculture important? • soil health has been massively reduced from modern farming practices • this requires farmers to use even more artificial inputs, reduces water retention, and reduces resilience • biodiversity is declining rapidly, and regenerative farming aims to restore biodiversity • regenerative farming has the potential to sequester carbon rather than releasing it #sustainability #regenerative #regenerativefarming #foodsystems

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Fixing Food, Fixing the Planet: Reflections from Labour Party Conference 2024 At this year’s Labour Party Conference, food and farming took center stage as critical issues shaping the future. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) hosted a fringe event, “Fix Food, Fix the Planet,” underscoring that equitable, sustainable food systems are essential for a healthier #UK. With policymakers like Minister Daniel Zeichner in attendance, the event saw an outpouring of ideas on regenerative farming and inclusive policy. Farmers James Rebanks, Sophie Gregory, and Andy Cato brought their diverse perspectives. Rebanks discussed the “social contract” promised to farmers post-Brexit, intended to support wildlife and nature restoration through government funding. With potential cuts to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), there’s mounting concern that these promises may fall short. Gregory, an organic dairy farmer, highlighted the need for accessible, timely payment schemes that support farmers without excessive bureaucracy. She also advocated for exposing children to farming and nature to foster a new generation that appreciates and participates in #sustainable #agriculture. Meanwhile, Cato pointed to the necessity of collective support for farmers working toward positive change, stressing that sustainable practices are only viable with a foundation of public and private funding. Though the event showed Labour's rising interest in eco-friendly, regenerative agriculture, FFCC attendees still await confirmation that food reform will receive prioritized financial support. As budgets are set this autumn, this commitment will determine whether the government’s interest in sustainable farming translates into lasting, impactful change. For more insights, check out https://lnkd.in/gqzJVjnt and FFCC’s “First 100 Days” proposals https://lnkd.in/eEdnBJdT.

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Today marks the UK's overshoot day for 2024, signifying the point when humanity's demand on nature exceeds Earth's biocapacity, based on the UK's consumption rate. Encouragingly, this date falls later than last year, which was on 19 May. However, the global perspective isn't such good news as World Overshoot Day for this year is projected to be on 25 July, 8 days earlier than in 2023 when it fell on 2 August. To provide context, in 1971, World Overshoot Day was 25 December. #Sustainability #Environment #OvershootDay #Biocapacity #Earth #ClimateAction

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We're already having some great conversations with innovators with respect to this upcoming call, and we've also been busy putting together an article to outline some of our thoughts on the topic area, as well as some of the related projects that we've collaborated on, or are collaborating in... #agritech #nutrientmanagement

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🚀 Cultivated Meat: could it be the game-changer for our food system? 🥩🌍 As the UK rethinks its food policies, cultivated meat offers a unique opportunity to lead in sustainable food innovation. The benefits are clear: ✅ Lower environmental impact: Significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and land use compared to traditional animal farming. ✅ Resource efficiency: Uses less water and agricultural inputs. ✅ Animal welfare: Provides high-quality protein without animal suffering. ✅ Food security: Scales efficiently to meet global demand without crossing planetary boundaries. It’s time to embrace this future-proof solution! 🌱 #SustainableFood #Innovation #CultivatedMeat #FutureOfFood

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This is an impressive read...well done to everyone involved! Here's to 2025 and continuing to see Reading lead the way in their Climate Change efforts and Net Zero goal. Tomato Energy are excited to be able to support these ambitions with our plans for the next year and beyond... *Empowering communities to power themselves!* 🍅 Introducing 'Tomatopia' - our vision for residents, businesses, schools, community centres (or any roof able to house solar panels!) to come together to create sustainable, self-sufficient communities as micro-grids. 🍅 Offering cost effective ways for residents and businesses to become more sustainable with our solar panel and battery storage packages. (No upfront costs, installation or maintenance fees and setting bills over a 5 year term!) 🍅 Working with local authorities, social housing providers, developers and private landlords on decarbonisation projects. 🍅 Working with charities, community centres, places of worship etc on projects to get energy bills as low as possible by offering place based energy options. 🍅 Keeping energy tariffs flexible, smart and affordable. 🍅 Offering energy as a 'service'. 🍅 Supporting our local good causes, charities, schools, community events and sustainability campaigns. 🍅 Working with and partnering up with our local community and stakeholders. #tomatoenergy 🍅

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Excellent article on the need for a remuneration (I rather thisas opposed to rewarding) for regenerative and low carbon ag practices for the environmental services they are providing. if we are serious about decarbonization, its not a gift, a reward, it's remuneration for services.

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A question for those in #agrifood and #beverages about #water (for a piece I am writing this week). Please read on and DM me/comment ... For businesses, #waterscarcity is where #climatechange “hits home”, noted The Economist in August 2022. And yet the “looming shortages” are by-and-large ignored by the world’s corporates and those who invest in them. “As a heavily subsidised raw material, water is so cheap that many CEOs overlook it,” the newspaper’s correspondent wrote. “For shareholders, it mostly comes far behind carbon emissions as an environmental, social and governance (#ESG) concern.” This was not the first such warning on water – and it certainly won’t be the last. And it’s not just CEOs that are turning a blind eye. When you look at chief sustainability officers, not many are deeply and actively working on water the way they should be, Charlotte Bande, global food and beverage sector lead at Quantis told me recently. Many companies continue to treat water in a very operational manner, she said, which is a bit like looking at only scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions in order to reach net-zero.    Indeed, cast your eyes around at the disclosures companies are making and the direction of travel appears promising. Plant efficiency is improving and use of water per litre is dropping. But is this telling us, the companies and their shareholders the whole story? Why is this harder than for carbon? (or is there just more pressure to disclose on carbon?) Who, if anyone in the corporate beverages world, has a decent understanding of their water risks and is doing something about it? And how important is it to better understand the issues (now current and not just looming) farmers are facing? Stuart Orr World Resources Institute Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) Nicolas Clerget Erica Pann, EIT Nolan Wright Patricia Calderon Michael Canova Christina Lampert CDP Chris Hilson Dominic Watkins Joanna Trewern Sarah Blanchard Tim Etherington-Judge Dr Vincent Walsh Patricia Stapor Ceres, Inc. Bianca Nijhof José Ignacio S. G. Nicolas Wertheimer David Read Suzanne Fogg Simon Davis Michael Lenaghan Francesca O'Hanlon, PhD Alex Adam Megan Glatzel Brenda McIlwraith Adrian Sym Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Sophie Harrison

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The Hope Farm statement offers a watershed moment - urging the next government to prioritise an ambitious food and farming strategy within its first 100 days. Signatories include food business leaders, farmer organisations, civil society, and campaigning groups.  The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, through #TheFoodConversation have been asking citizens what they want from food and unlike the much rolled out 'nanny state' narrative that the government are determined we don't want, it turns out that we do. We need a government willing to take ambitious and immediate action. This statement is timely and calls for six clear actions, drawing on a wealth of evidence, including the National Food Strategy. Read the statement 👇 https://lnkd.in/eBm2AX7y

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The logicality of trees complimenting livestock never really went away. Really, they just got forgotten, within a drive for cheaper global foods, and global market driven, agricultural additional inputs. Climate resilient landscapes, farms, food systems, communities, need trees back, in all the right places, for all the right reasons. #agroforestry #hedgesandedges #farming #agriculture

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Citizens want a fairer deal for farmers and growers, to enable the sector to shift quickly towards more sustainable, nature friendly and climate safe farming practices, with more investment in the best practices, and effectively regulating bad and outdated practices. They want to see tougher regulation that ensures fair dealing between retailers and other buyers, and farmers; and an ambitious plan to expand the production of the healthy food we need more of – fruit, veg, nuts and pulses. Importantly citizens did not shy away from the discussions uppermost in politicians’ minds right now. How do we make this work when government has so many calls on the public finances? Citizens were startled to hear the cost of inaction to the country right now. From the cost of diet related ill health (some estimates now rising to £98bn across the NHS and the economy). And let’s be clear. There is plenty of money in the food system – it’s just not in the right place and doing the right things. While many of us have been struggling with a grim rise in the cost of living, big food businesses have been doing very well thank you. Not for the likes of Tesco, Cargill or Coca-Cola the need to tighten belts and make hard choices. Tesco profits doubled to £2.7bn!

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Supermarkets - Is it time to fight the system or test new models? Riverford Organic Farmers are leading the ‘Get Fair on Farming’ campaign, asking all supermarkets to accept their Fair to Farmers Charter, five calls to action. Riverford’s campaign seeks to put the farmer back at the heart of our food industry, which will ultimately benefit us all. Most of us see the supermarket model as a resounding success in that we can access it for convenience and low cost food. But thanks to Riverford Organic Farmers and others like them, we now understand that the farmer is paying the price for our cheap food and that according to Lisa Jack, the supermarket model is on a knife edge and only survives by enticing customers to buy additional items and by looking to their suppliers to keep costs down. " Professor Jack, one of the few accountancy academics to focus on the food system, finds that one way supermarkets keep costs low is by charging suppliers fees for marketing and selling their products, generating ‘commercial income’ which can equal or exceed supermarkets’ bottom-line profits. Without the commercial income generated by charging supplier fees, British supermarkets would be running at or near a loss. " (https://lnkd.in/dm3ZGH3D). In her paper 'the secrets of supermarketing', she explains that “the supermarkets’ business model has unintentionally left us with a food system characterised by over-purchasing, over-eating, over-production and waste. Food is transferred to store cupboards in consumers’ homes and then left unused; empty calories are stored in our bodies; and edible food goes into bins.” But conversely we also know, thanks to the The Food Foundation 'The State of the Nation's Food Industry' report, that the gap between executive and shop worker pay is also a major part of the problem. “the pay gap between executive level and shopfloor workers is high across all large food retailers. The retailer with the biggest pay gap between executive and shopfloor pay, based on the available data, was Sainsbury’s with a pay gap of £4.8 million. So whilst we hope a new government will look at ways to curb corporate greed and prioritise those who grow our food, what other options do we have for a fairer food industry where the food we eat is better for people and planet?

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Regenerative-washing, or a sign of the Early Majority arising? The Regenerative Confluence community that I facilitate has recently been exploring how we integrate regenerative approaches in relation to the so-called 'Early Majority' on the adoption curve. There is a whole new population that is making shifts from sustainability to regeneration, whose needs, approaches and language may look and feel very different from those of Pioneers and Early Adopters, as this news from McCain's illustrates. A commitment to achieving 100% regeneratively farmed potatoes in the next five years. This has the potential to massively benefit soil health through minimising soil disturbance and assuring greater ground cover throughout the year, reducing water run-off, reducing exogenous inputs, improving bio-diversity and carbon capture. For McCain, it helps safeguard their supply chain in the face of climate change and soil degradation. Whilst purists might find issue with the whole concept of oven chips, impact of seed oils on health and endocrine disruption, packaging, marketing, business model etc, this move has the potential to impact how potatoes and other staple crops are grown across the world. Donald Schön, who developed the field of reflective practice, described the tension beautifully: “In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground, overlooking a swamp … In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation, is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner must chose. Shall he remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to prevailing standards of rigor, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems and non-rigorous inquiry?” What does this suggest for regenerative practice? If you'd like to join our conversations this coming Monday as a guest, we'll be meeting 8.00-9.30 am UK, and 17.00-18.30 UK. Please DM me for a link to our calls. Or to find out more about Regenerative Confluence, see https://lnkd.in/etGgDdZh #regenetative #regenerativeagriculture #soilhealth #sustainability #earlyadopters #earlymajority #reflectivepractice #regenerativecoaching #regenerativeOD #swampylowlands #climatechange #foodsecurity #potatoes (with an 'e'?) McCain Foods https://lnkd.in/eJ2gsH74

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Embracing the Early Majority in Regeneration 💚 Such a great call this morning with our Regenerative Confluence community members about the challenges and opportunities of engaging with Early Majority expressions of regenerative practice. Leaving our call feeling energised for the week ahead and all that it might bring! A few thoughts: - those who identify as Early Adopters need to think about how they are holding the tension between bridge-building and gate-keeping - learning to match size and scale of new entrants to regenerative practice and economies via self-organising principles and inter-operability of our expertise and services that can support their journey, remembering that regeneration is always a journey, not a destination, for all of us - working with an appreciative inquiry mindset that can spot the many expressions and pockets of regeneration and decoloniality in all contexts, and become agile in helping to amplify them Our second call today at 12.00 - 13.30 EST, 17.00 - 16.30 BST/UK and 18.00 - 19.30 CET picks up these themes - if you would like to join as a guest, just DM me, and we look forward to welcoming you! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Ways to stay in touch - 💚 Subscribe to my newsletter 'Regenerative Coaching and OD', here's a recent edition that looks at the adoption curve in relation to regeneration that you might find interesting: https://lnkd.in/ee3KAbKn 💚 Consider joining Regenerative Confluence - fortnightly conversations around how we integrate living systems principles in all of life and work: https://lnkd.in/etGgDdZh or DM me if you would like to attend as a guest 💚 Free healing circle sessions, held one a month, keeping us aligned to the heartbeat of healing, healing at the heart of regeneration: https://lnkd.in/etxDEw6u

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Facts? Anti-farming?? Again, spare us. Not anti farming - anti BS. And some farming leaders should know better than to hide behind real farmers facing real problems. I get they want to weaponise a budget measure. But it's despicable to do so with one which will not adversely affect family farms - unless they are persuaded not to take up the measures available to them as a result of being needlessly terrified or deliberately misled for political reasons by lurid headlines fed to the media by farming leaders. Headlines to be followed closely by articles in the farming press placed to highlight rising suicide ideation as a result of low farmer confidence. Following surveys commissioned by farming leaders after the readership has read the lurid headlines... Most of the public are anti self serving BS from an industry propped up by tax funded subsidies and support payments too many members of which then have the brass neck to complain that as a result of the Budget those married couples in farming with more than £3 million in personal assets might have to pay a reduced amount of Inheritance Tax unless they put into place some of the measures open to them in the next two years... Being against endless cries of wolf, endless special pleading, endless 'farmer exceptionalism' whether that's in regulation, taxation, pollution control, or respect for wildlife - doesn't make anyone anti farming or anti farmer. Just fed up with endless shroud waving by over mighty entitled agricultural trade lobby groups shocked that Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and HM Treasury should once in a blue moon say 'no' to the industry's increasingly ridiculous demands. It's increasingly like letting owners of private coal mines and oil wells dictate national energy policy. Personally speaking, I look forward to a day when the de facto statutory consultee on agricultural policy matters is no longer the NFU. Time Keir Starmer and Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP consulted on either creating a new broader based land management, food, farming and sustainability group to act as the statutory consultee or pledge to use an existing body or panel of bodies to do the job. The same broad problem exists in Europe with the real and highly destructive interests of Big Agriculture hiding behind photogenic small family farms, using the genuinely hard pressed farmer as a front.. Ask Ariel Brunner The Budget was not a threat to Britain's Family Farms. Small family farms trying to operate as though they were big farms are more of a threat to small family farms.

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