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Themes

Farming

Under what kinds of systems is our food produced? What ideas and contexts drive these systems and how do these systems affect the people and ecosystems involved in them?

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An icon featuring an illustration of a tractor and two large wheat stalks.

Consumption

What forces interact in the market to influence the availability and accessibility of certain food products? How do consumers view their own power in food supply chains?

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Icon of basket containing food items

Politics & Paradigms

How does the way governments and other institutions approach food security and sovereignty shape food landscapes?

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Icon of four people sat round a table

Environmental & Social Impacts

What impacts does our food system have on ecosystems, society and the planet? How can we quantify or measure these impacts?

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Icon of a hand holding a world with a leaf on it

Food System Transformation

What does the future of the food system look like? Which actors are driving transformation and what visions do they each have for that future?

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Icon of a globe with three arrows around it pointing in a clockwise direction

Meat, Dairy & Livestock

What is the role of dairy and livestock in our food system? What are the social and environmental impacts of this role and what does a 'good' future look like for animals, people and the planet?

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Icon of a chicken standing in front of a pig

Our Latest Writing

How to get out of deep sh*t: the need for honest and nature-inclusive policy measures for livestock farming in the Netherlands Essay Nitrogen has been at the centre of ongoing tensions in Dutch agricultural policy. Mirjam Schoonhoven-Speijer explores the history of the tensions and some proposed solutions.Mirjam is a post-doctorate researcher at Wageningen University. She’s interested in the informal part of food systems, because this is where, especially in the Global South, most of the exchanges in food systems happen. Yet it is also undervalued in research, policy and practice. Her PhD research, also at Wageningen University, involved a comparison of formal and informal market governance arrangements in the Ugandan oilseeds sector. The deceptively simple question of ‘how exchanges in food markets actually work and evolve in daily practice’ makes her tick. She explores this question with an interdisciplinary background in anthropology, development studies, sociology, agricultural economics, and innovation studies.

What We Disagree About When We Disagree About Meat Meat / Essay This personal essay by Matthew Kessler was originally published in Tangle News, an independent, subscriber-supported media organization that covers the biggest politics stories in the U.S. by summarizing arguments from the right, left, and center (then "our take"). Matthew Kessler is the creator, host and producer of TABLE's food systems podcast, Feed, and has spent the past 15 years moving between farms, kitchens, universities, and recording studios. From 2022-2024, Matthew led a 2-year podcast project exploring four different futures for meat and livestock, adapted from Tara Garnett's Gut feelings essay.

Podcasts

Debates about the future of food have become more polarised than ever - and little attention is paid to why people hold genuinely different views. This podcast aims to fill this gap by exploring the evidence, worldviews, and values that people bring to global food system debates.

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