Meet the speaker - Anna Taylor, The Food Foundation

Cultivating a sustainable and equitable food system with fresh thinking 

The 2025 Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) comes at a critical juncture, where the intersection of public health, sustainable agriculture, and food policy has never been more pertinent. Emerging as a compelling voice on the subject is Anna Taylor, Executive Director of the Food Foundation - an organisation on a mission to enable healthier and more sustainable eating habits by engaging policymakers and businesses to change the incentives within the food system. 

The current backdrop, however, presents formidable challenges. The UK is grappling with a public health crisis in which poor diet is a significant contributor to adverse health outcomes across the lifespan. At the same time, a climate crisis looms, with nature and biodiversity loss linked directly to unsustainable food production and consumption patterns. These interconnected crises demand a comprehensive, strategic response—a response that Anna Taylor is well-equipped to spearhead at OFC. 

Bridging the Farm to Fork Gap 

At a fundamental level, Anna is passionate about enabling children to eat a nourishing diet that protects their long-term health and wellbeing. In the UK, children’s diets have deteriorated to such a degree that not only are there rising rates of unhealthy weights from a young age, but there are also cases of stunted growth due to poor nutrition. In Anna’s opinion, the burgeoning evidence on the harmful health effects of ultra-processed foods necessitates policy interventions to ensure that nutritious, locally sourced foods are more accessible, and more widely consumed – a message Anna hopes to communicate at January’s conference.  

She explains, “I’m keen to explore how we make a stronger connection between what people are eating in Britain, particularly children, and our farmers and the food they produce. At the moment, there is a massive disconnect, with the highly nutritious foods which farmers grow becoming unrecognisable as it enters long and complex supply chains. 

“This divide, and the significant issues it brings, urgently needs to be addressed, and we must explore avenues for more direct, robust connections between farmers and consumers.” 

And while improving diets is the ultimate goal, Anna argues that more needs to be done to support the British farmers that enable this. 

Rethinking Food Policy for a Sustainable Future 

With OFC 2025 taking place six months into the new Labour government, Anna maintains that now is the time to refresh our thinking about food and farming, acknowledging the significant pressures facing the agricultural sector. 

She notes, “We cannot ignore the fact that farmers are facing a plethora of obstacles, from high input costs and unpredictable weather patterns to issues with labour and diminishing profits due to supermarket buying power.” 

With the current system often leaving farmers struggling to sustain their businesses while consumers, especially those from low-income families, find it increasingly difficult to afford nutritious food, Anna highlights the need for a more integrated approach to policymaking so that multiple wins can be achieved simultaneously. 

She says, “We simply cannot address the problem of poor diets through a single lens, and while the matter of fruit and affordability must be considered, total supply chain fairness is imperative.”  

Embracing New Perspectives for a New Era 

At OFC25, Anna will not shy away from the difficult questions that must be addressed before our broken food system can be fixed. She hopes to challenge delegates to think beyond the constraints of the current reality, posing a series of "what if" questions designed to encourage stakeholders to envision a food system where policy incentives align with the needs of both farmers and consumers, fostering an environment where nutritious, locally produced foods are accessible to all. 

"We’ve got an impossible system at the moment that is doing harm to both farmers and consumers," Anna contends. "Those who are growing and those who are eating our food are not faring well, and that is the fundamental problem we must address."  

Her call to action is clear: it is time to rethink the way we approach food and farming in the UK, to build a system that supports health, sustainability, and fairness. 

Tickets are now on sale for OFC25 which will take place from 8 to 10 January 2025. Find out more here.