Organising food differently: investigating 'alternatives', dietary change and sustainable food futures

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My research asks how we can organise the food system differently such that we can build more sustainable food futures. Today, it is increasingly evident that people's relationships to food, and their diets, are shifting in response to a range of profound global challenges. Climate change is likely to have significant impacts on the global food system as climactic conditions become ever more unpredictable. Elsewhere, concerns around declining soil fertility and the population of insects such as bees risk undermining our ability to grow food and sustain human life on this planet. With these challenges in mind, and in a world increasingly divided into the 'stuffed' and the 'starved', we need to explore ways in which we might address these ills in the global food system.To date, and in response to this problem, my research has focused on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) in a global context. Broadly speaking, AFNs can be understood as examples of attempts to organise the food system differently outside of the everyday context of the supermarket. With it, AFNs may serve to foster different relationships to-and understandings of-food. These networks include organisations such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes, direct producer-consumer linkages, local markets, and food co-operatives. My research suggests that whilst AFNs, tending to work at a small scale, may be unable to instrumentally solve these global challenges alone, they prompt us to ask important questions about the ways in which we tend to organise and 'do' food in everyday life. Consequently, they encourage us to ask not only why we eat what we eat, but also to recognise how food practices carry extensive social, economic and environmental consequences. By bringing people together in new ways that are not typically engendered by a trip to the supermarket, I suggest that AFNs are important spaces in reconfiguring relationships with food.Further, this is not to say that mainstream relationships to food outside of these 'alternative' spaces are static. My research interests are currently developing to encompass important changes in how many relate to food, which can be evidenced by a trip to almost any supermarket in the United Kingdom. Given the growing awareness of the impacts of our diets mentioned above, consumers are increasingly interested in moving away from meat and other animal-derived products in bringing about what I frame as a possible 'post-meat' world. Many people are now 'flexitarians' or 'reducetarians', and these significant dietary changes-including the widespread availability of meat substitutes such as Quorn, 'fake meat' products and non-dairy milks-are sending shockwaves through the food system as we know it. For example, Tyson Foods, the second largest meat processor in the world, now has a 5% stake in the multi-million dollar plant-based Beyond Burger company. Market research has suggested that whilst the meat substitute market was valued at $4.1b globally in 2017, this is expected to expand to over $7.5b by 2025. This is a market which is expected to grow with no sign of abating as consumer preferences shift away from meat. My research would develop greater understanding of these shifts at this critical juncture, exploring these dietary and cultural changes which are already well underway.The University of Bristol is an ideal location for me to continue to develop and explore my research. The School of Management has extensive expertise in research around sustainable production and consumption, and the University also hosts the interdisciplinary Cabot Institute for the Environment, with important research in food security led by my mentor, Professor David Evans. To summarise the aims of this fellowship, I intend to publish a range of journal articles to advance timely scholarly knowledge; to foster the 'public facing' impact of my research; and to develop a new research proposal exploring the shift towards a 'post-meat' world.