Does it matter where our food comes from and how its produced?

Food is one of the few essentials of human life.

Each of us has to eat every day to provide the energy for our daily lives and to maintain our health and the substance of our bodies. But eating is more than a mere biological necessity, but something worth living for. The joy of eating is a wonder of everyday life, our meals daily social and cultural events.

The British countryside is a farmed landscape, created by the need to produce food. The nature of much of our most beautiful countryside depends on grazing or other farming activities. Globally, much of the planet is shaped by food production. Urban areas too are moulded by the supply of food, the character of our streets largely determined by the shops we choose to buy our food from.

Billions of people work to produce, process, distribute and cook the food we eat. The livelihood and way of life of entire communities is provided by the food they produce.

Food supply, long globalised and largely industrialised, requires enormous resources and impacts on the local and global environment.

Farming made civilisation possible and the production and supply of food has influenced history ever since.

What we eat, the way our food is produced and where it comes from, shapes ourselves, our bodies, urban and rural landscapes, the people and communities that work to provide food and the global environment.

It matters.