Food, Faith and the Future: ‘Feeding Britain’ online conference

04/10/2022

"Feeding Britain" is an online half-day conference from 9.30am to 1.30pm on Saturday 8th October, featuring leading experts in modern food production with the Archbishop of York, and organised by the Diocese of York's Rural Life and Faith Group to explore the full range of issues from a distinctively Christian perspective.

Food security, food production, environment and climate change, food justice, food trade, healthy eating and geopolitical issues all challenge our shared future in urban, rural and coastal communities, whether we are Christian or not, within the Diocese of York and beyond it.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell says, "We're here to talk about food, farming, the environment - some of the biggest issues that face individual families, and the whole human race."

•    Keynote Speaker Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University’s Centre for Food Policy since 2002. He was a hill farmer in the 1970s and for the last 38 years has engaged in public and academic research and debate about food policy. He’s been an advisor to many bodies, from the European Commissioner for the Environment to the Mayor of London. He was Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission from 2006 to 2011. He is co-author of Ecological Public Health (Routledge, 2012), Food Policy (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Food Wars (Earthscan, 2004).

•    Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell's video input will feature conversation with the Diocese of York’s Rural Life and Faith Group member Howard Petch, a former Principal of Bishop Burton College who has been awarded an OBE and CBE for services to agriculture.

•    Alexia Robinson founded Love British Food in 2002. She is a Dorset girl fuelled by a passion for the rural life she enjoyed as a child: "No sheep, no cows, no countryside. If we don’t buy British and support our farmers, it won’t be long before we don’t have any farms, have to rely much more on imported foods of questionable quality and the countryside will become a rural theme park." The focal point of Love British Food's activities is British Food Fortnight, the national celebration of our food that takes place every Autumn in the last week of September and the first week of October, at the same time as Harvest Festival, the traditional time for celebrating our food. The Fortnight is now established annually as the biggest national celebration of British food. 

•    The Revd Dr Mark Betson, Church of England National Public Policy Advisor and former National Rural Office will also be contributing.

Diocesan Rural Life and Faith Ambassador, Bishop of Selby Dr John Thomson said, "God's provision of food to sustain all God's people is the bedrock of all our futures, and the way each community tends its part of the Earth is a vital part of our care for each other and for creation.

"I hope people in all the different communities in the Diocese of York and beyond will want to join us on the 8th October to learn and pray together about these crucial issues."

•    Book your free place here
 

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