FDBusiness.com

Senior leaders from a range of leading food businesses have joined the Future Food Movement’s Accelerator programme, which aims to upskill the food and drink industry on critical climate issues. Its ambition is to upskill 10,000 people working in the industry in 2022.

The businesses – Moy Park, Samworth Brothers, The Compleat Food Group, Greencore Group plc, Nomad Foods, Sipsmith Gin, The Food and Drink Federation and Cranswick plc – are responsible for producing or influencing a significant proportion of the food sold in the UK. This also means that they have a significant opportunity to deliver a positive climate impact across the food system.

The Future Food Movement is a pioneering new community, industry network and upskilling platform, founded by Veris Strategies, which is solely focused on closing the climate skills gap and driving genuine collaboration between food companies in order to tackle climate change.

Kate Cawley, founder of the Future Food Movement, said: “The launch of our first Accelerator programme is a huge step forward in helping the food industry embed climate knowledge within its people and teams and drive real, actionable change. Our 2022 ambition is to upskill 10,000 senior leaders in the food industry along with thousands of other individuals through our Ally community.

“The Future Food Movement is based on the truism that if you understand the impacts of climate change, then you can make a difference. True business leaders will recognise the importance of climate upskilling to make their businesses fit for the future. Knowledge really is power.”

The UK food industry is facing a trilemma of health, sustainability and affordability issues but it is also facing a growing climate skills gap which could, if not fixed, derail both business growth and the future health of the planet.

Jack Gorman, head of investor relations at Greencore Group plc, said: “The Future Food Movement helps those of us not directly working in a sustainability role both upskill and learn how others in the food and drink sector are managing the challenge when sustainability choices conflict with business and commercial choices.”

The Future Food Movement Accelerator programme brings together senior leaders from competitive food and drink businesses to build a climate knowledge bank which spans all areas of the food chain from procurement to production, finance to food development. The twelve-week programme includes workshops and coaching delivered by a team of climate, sustainability, regenerative food, communications, diversity & inclusion, climate finance & risk, human rights and retail experts.

The Future Food Movement is role-agnostic in that it supports knowledge building across all roles and departments. The first Accelerator cohorts include a wide variety of experts including c-suite leaders, environmental and sustainability experts, technical managers, sourcing and procurement, health & safety directors, capital markets and operations personnel.

Mike Barry, Director of Mike Barry Eco, is a pioneer of the green business movement who helped develop and launch Marks and Spencer’s ground-breaking Plan A strategy and is aFuture Food Movement coach, said: “The global food sector is the most important one on the planet, it quite literally sustains us. But it has an outsized, growing and unsustainable impact on society

(wellbeing to human rights) and the planet (GHG emissions to water use, soil and biodiversity loss).

“At heart, it is a deeply human sector, and the Future Food Movement is there to engage, inspire, empower and upskill those who work in food. As a coach in the Movement I hope to help create a very much more sustainable approach to food.”

The Future Food Movement will take on monthly cohorts in 2022 and aims to inspire and action positive climate initiatives within the businesses it is working with, that ultimately, will affect the whole industry.