The Soil Association has written an open letter to new Prime Minister Liz Truss calling on her to take five key actions, with a focus on using school food to help address the connections between hunger and diet-related poor health and the climate and nature emergencies.
In her letter, chief executive Helen Browning (pictured) calls on Liz Truss to back the Soil Association’s vision of ‘a future where everyone has access to affordable, healthy and nutritious diets, underpinned by a resilient food system that protects nature and climate’.
The five actions on the organisation’s ‘to do’ list for the new prime minister are:
• Immediately implement universal free school meals for all Key Stage Two children across England
• Immediately increase funding for school meals so that caterers are not forced to cut standards with ingredients that undercut British farmers, as part of a wider package of reforms to school food policy
• Commit to diverting the hundreds of millions spend on school meals to British, sustainable farmers, with the revised buying standards introduced at the earliest opportunity
• Commit to continuing the roll out and development of the Environmental Land Management Schemes and Sustainable Farming Incentives with funding for protecting soils and a farmer-led tree revolution
• Work with the Soil Association’s Food for Life scheme to roll out a ‘whole-school approach’ to food that promotes healthy, sustainable food, and food education from an early age
In the letter Helen said, “You enter office with a vast range of challenges awaiting you. People across the United Kingdom need and expect you to act with urgency to secure their wellbeing.
“Alongside the energy crisis, the nation’s ability to feed people healthily and sufficiently must be a crucial priority.
“One easy and popular way to do this is through public sector procurement whereby you can provide millions of people with healthy, local and sustainable food.
“Our public sector caterers, many of whom are struggling so much right now, hold the keys to unlock this opportunity, and must remain fully supported with adequate funding.
“Government has made a step in the right direction by consulting on a target for 50% of public food spend to be on food produced locally or certified to higher environmental production standards, such as organic.
“To deliver on this bold ambition, action will be needed to ensure the viability of the catering service over the months ahead.
'As a matter of urgency, government should introduce universal free school meals across primary schools in England, a policy that would be transformational in ensuring all children have access to at least one healthy meal every day, while providing caterers with the economies of scale which should help to balance budgets.”