***FULLY BOOKED***

Thank you so much for your interest in Better Food, we are now fully booked and the waitlist has been activated - if places become available you will automatically receive an email confirming your booking. Also, subscribe to our YouTube channel here - you will receive an update when the recording is published and, while you're there, maybe check out previous Better Future Forums.

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Forward Democracy presents the Better Future Forum - a series of monthly events showcasing game-changing innovators working towards a future that thrives, in tune with each other and the planet.

Themes include: health, education, water, work, economics, equality, housing, energy, biodiversity and - of course - democracy.

Episode 3 - Better Food - will engage with pioneers behind systems and products that are fundamentally reimagining what ends up on our plate and how it gets there.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us not to take anything for granted - including our food supply chains. Evidenced by row after row of empty shelves, major supermarkets struggled to adapt to such a large shift in buying patterns. Simultaneously, some local food producers up and down the country have seen their best ever year. While food waste becomes an ever more mountainous issue, new research shows there is likely to be a 61% rise in need this winter for the UK's biggest food bank network. This is all before the realities of Brexit really start to unfold.

Food is about as personal as it gets, and acutely political - what are we doing right? Where are we getting it wrong? And how can we build a better system?

Joining us will be:

• Co-host: Ylva Johannesson, Sustainability Consultant, Ylva Food
• Co-host: Peter Barden, Co-founder, Forward Democracy
• Jamie Crummie, Co-founder, Too Good To Go
• Lynne Davis, Chief Executive, Open Food Network
• Michelle Sullivan, Co-founder, The Artisan Grower
• Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy, City University of London

Check out their bios below. Each speaker will talk about their latest work, reflect on what's hot for them, share calls to action, discuss synergies and paths forward - with comments and questions from attendees throughout.

We very much look forward to welcoming you then!

People come together, work together, and win together. We choose not just to survive, but to thrive.

Forward Democracy is a non-profit organisation that has been working to create a path to a better democracy in the UK since 2015, bringing together communities and individuals to take those steps together. You may have used one of our tactical voting tools, Swap My Vote, or seen it featured in the press. We passionately believe that democracy’s ongoing improvement is absolutely critical as it underpins all of society’s intricate and interconnected challenges.

Better political decision-making benefits everyone: not left, not right, but forward.

Biographies

Jamie Crummie

Jamie Crummie trained as a lawyer before pursuing his mission of fighting food waste. He is the co-founder of Too Good To Go, the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food. The food app lets consumers buy unsold food from restaurants and retailers so that it doesn’t go to waste. Too Good To Go is now active in 15 countries and has over 29 million users who have rescued over 55 million meals collectively. In the UK, over 2.5 million meals have been saved to date. Jamie was named One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year in August 2020, one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe in February 2019 and was shortlisted for the Entrepreneur For Good Award at the Natwest Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2019.

Lynne Davis

Lynne Davis' purpose and passion is to build global food sovereignty. She has spent the last decade understanding food systems - working as a commercial farmer, reclaiming land as an activist, establishing community farming projects, researching in policy think tanks, and campaigning in agricultural unions. As Chief Executive of the Open Food Network UK, Lynne combines this experience with degrees in software engineering and agricultural economics to build regional food systems that serve people and planet, in the UK and globally.

Michelle Sullivan

Sharing an avid love for vegan and organic produce is what planted the seed for Michelle and Robert Sullivan’s new business venture, The Artisan Grower. Starting off as nothing more than a hobby for the two owners, their Insch-based vegetable growing company has since seen its products distributed all over Scotland. The couple take great pride in their alternative method of growing, which allows them to provide an extensive variety of delicious seasonal and sustainable fruit and vegetable types.

Tim Lang

Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City, University of London's Centre for Food Policy since 2002. He founded the Centre in 1994. After a PhD in social psychology at Leeds University, he became a hill farmer in the 1970s in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire which shifted his attention to food policy, where it has been ever since. For years, he's engaged in academic and public research and debate about its direction, locally to globally. His abiding interest is how policy addresses the mixed challenge of being food for the environment, health, social justice, and citizens. What is a good food system? How is ours measured and measuring up?

Ylva Johannesson

Ylva works with food-led businesses, governments and organisations to create a tailor-made approach to improving their sustainability credentials and creating a food system that is regenerative, nourishing and fair. Encompassing everything from farm to fork and all touchpoints in-between, she takes an integrated, systems-based approach rooted in science, using the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Planetary Boundaries as reference frameworks.