Country Trust response to the UK Government Food Strategy

For more than forty years, charity, The Country Trust, has been enabling children to connect with farming and food. Policy Advisor, Nina Bell, says the Government’s new food strategy does nothing to shift the status quo:

“Henry Dimbleby’s review of the food system makes clear that food is the single most critical issue impacting climate change, children’s health, and the health of our planet.

“Yet with this new food strategy Ministers seem to be expecting children to eat healthily, value food and make informed and sustainable food choices, without allowing them any meaningful exposure to how food is produced.

“If we’re to achieve real change then step one should be allowing children to get out of the classroom and explore where food comes from. Inexplicably it’s too often the case that farmers are expected to remain invisible when it comes to children learning about food.

“We’ve lost our connection to the land that sustains us all. Until we mend that, we won’t change anything, for health or the natural world.

“We believe every child should have the opportunity to visit a real working farm, to discover through first-hand experience where their food comes from.

“Our food strategy should set children up to thrive. This document certainly fails to do that.”

- Nina Bell

Read the goverment paper