Announcing our new Champions
The AFN Network+ is excited to introduce our six new Champions for 2024. The Champions bring a wealth of expertise spanning the agri-food system, from hands-on farming to wider industry, academia and the public sector. Each Champion will lead one of six research themes, identified by our members during The Big Tent 2023, our annual general meeting.
Leaders in their respective fields, the Champions bring a diverse range of experience. From hospitality to innovative agri-businesses, communications, third sector organisations and food systems research, their backgrounds encompass the food system from farm to fork.
Our Champions play a key role in supporting our mission of identifying key research gaps that may be holding the UK food system back from transitioning towards a net zero UK by 2050.
“We eagerly anticipate the valuable contribution they’ll make to the Network.”
Drawing on their expertise and knowledge, the Champions will build their own networks, centred around their respective theme. They will run engagement activities with the aim of seeking and synthesising ideas and thinking around the drive towards achieving net zero by 2050. Crucially, they will map the research and innovation landscape, within their theme as well as across others, identifying critical knowledge and activity gaps that need addressing.
Stefan Kepinski, Champions Coordinator said: “We’re thrilled to welcome our exceptional new Champions. They bring with them unique insight into the agri-food sector, which is crucial if we want to advance real change in the food system as the UK transitions to net zero. We eagerly anticipate the valuable contribution they’ll make to the Network.”
More on this year's themes
Healthy and sustainable diets
How to develop a resilient UK food system that contributes to net zero while promoting healthy diets? This theme focuses on the need for dietary and food system change to contribute to a net zero UK, while promoting access to healthy and affordable diets.
Land productivity
What should we grow in the UK? This theme focuses on the productive utilisation of our finite land resource. It covers questions of how crop and animal breeding and husbandry can help ensure sufficient food is produced from less land, and how space can be created for ambitious targets for planting trees to sequester carbon.
Food security and trade
Where should our food come from? This theme focuses on the geographical scales at which our agri-food system operates and the balance between food produced and traded locally, nationally and across national borders. It covers questions of food security, reliance and sustainability of markets and supply changes at different spatial scales.
Land use change and land management
How should we change land use and land management in the UK? This theme focuses on the mechanisms and incentive systems to drive required changes in land use and land management in the UK. It covers questions of agricultural support policies, new markets for carbon sequestration (trees and soils), land use frameworks and reconciling demands of net zero, biodiversity and other environmental services).
Circular food systems
How can we develop a more circular UK food system, including the agricultural economy and ecology, other components of the system, and the infrastructure that underpins it? This theme focuses on the question of more sustainable agricultural production systems with a particular emphasis on the concepts of circularity. It covers questions of the need for smaller-scale, mixed farming systems and the relative merits of systems such as agroecology, agroforestry and regenerative agriculture, and the re-use of nutrients from along the supply chain.
Behaviour change
Individual and institutional behaviour change in the UK agri-food system. This theme focuses on the role of institutions and policies to encourage behaviour change in the agri-food system. It includes questions of politics, economics and psychology, and the individual and institutional dynamics of changes in food production practices and diet.
