I think the farming side is really exciting. We have an opportunity to pay people not to destroy nature, but to restore it and give payments for public goods. The one thing already that has gone slightly wrong is trade deals because it makes no sense to incentivise our farmers to farm differently. And you're just moving the problems to a country where you can't see them. In the Australian trade deal, probably the worst trade deal any country has ever done. According to the Australian press, who were amazed by how bad it was, in that trade did not protect our farmers. But if we do similar trade deals with America and Brazil and so forth, we could hobble at our own attempt
Food Campaigner Henry Dimbleby is co-founder of LEON and recently quit his role as the government’s food tsar over its inaction over obesity. His recent book, Ravenous: How To Get Ourselves And Our Planet Into Shape, looks at the global food system that has resulted in 28% of people now being clinically obese in the UK alone and diet-related disease now being the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the developed world. In conversation with Times columnist Alice Thomson, he explains the damage our food ecosystem is doing to us and to the planet, and his strategy for creating a truly healthy and sustainable food system.
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