The UK's agri-food system—farming, food processing, distribution, and retail—currently produces 23% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. This Network+ project brings together researchers, industry, government, and citizens to map out practical routes for the sector to reach net zero by 2050, while also protecting biodiversity, soil health, and water quality, and avoiding simply shifting environmental damage overseas through imports. The challenge is that there is no single clear path to net zero for food and land use. Different options—changing diets, new farming technologies, carbon capture in soils—have trade-offs and uncertainties. This network will run feasibility studies, workshops, and "crucible" events to test high-reward ideas and build consensus on which pathways are most robust under different future market and policy conditions. If successful, the project will produce a trusted, evidence-based set of transformation routes that can guide government policy, industry investment, and farming practice. It could reshape how the UK grows, processes, and consumes food, turning the agri-food system from a major emitter into a net carbon sink, while keeping supply chains resilient and affordable.
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The agri-food system, producing 23% of UK emissions, must play a key role in the UK's transition to net zero by 2050, and through leadership in innovation can support change globally. Our Network+ will build on existing and new partnerships across research and stakeholder communities to develop a shared agenda, robust research plans, and scope out future research and innovation. The Network will design and deliver high-reward feasibility projects to help catalyse rapid system transformation to ensure the agri-food system is sustainable and supports the UK's net zero goal, while enhancing biodiversity, maintaining ecosystem services, fostering livelihoods and supporting healthy consumption, and minimising the offshoring of environmental impacts overseas through trade. The radical scale of the net zero challenge requires an equally bold and ambitious approach to research and innovation, not least because of the agri-food and land system's unique potential as a carbon sink. Our title, Plausible Pathways, Practical and Open Science, recognises the agri-food system as a contested area in which a range of pathways are plausible. Success requires that new relationships between natural and social science, stakeholders including industry, government and citizens, be forged in which distributed expertise is actively harnessed to support sectoral transformation. We will use our breadth of expertise from basic research to application, policy and engagement to co-produce a trusted, well-evidenced, and practical set of routes, robust to changing future market, policy and social drivers, to evolve the agri-food system towards net zero and sustainability. Marshalling our many existing stakeholder links, we will review and evaluate current options and use Network funding to catalyse new partnerships through retreats, crucibles, workshops, online digital networking and scoping studies to develop system approaches to transformation, reframe the research agenda and undertake novel research projects. We will co-design productive and creative spaces that enable the research community to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and thought leaders through the following framework: 7 Co-Is who govern the Network but are not themselves eligible for funding; 9 Year-1 Champions (with new appointments after Year 1) dynamically forging new connections across research communities; 11 Advisory Board members tasked with challenging business-as-usual thinking; and regular liaison with other stakeholders.
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