2025

The BES’s 2025 symposium explored the prospects for sustainable transitions across the food supply chain. The event, entitled Nature, Farming and Food: How we value our land, was coorganised by TABLE, the Agile Initiative and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, each based at the University of Oxford. The symposium brought together academics, campaigners, and policymakers for two days of lively discussion around a series of interrelated questions related to the future of food and farming.

The programme was organised across four interdisciplinary thematic sessions: Valuing Farming, Valuing Biodiversity, Valuing Food and Valuing Knowledge. Each theme included an invited keynote, paper presentations and posters. Submissions ranged from ecological evidence regarding agroforestry’s impact on pollinators in England to ethnographic reflections on potato production in the Himalayas. Despite the breadth of the subjects and perspectives, key themes emerged throughout the symposium which are brought together in this summary document.

Join us for Nature, Farming & Food, our symposium in collaboration with TABLE & the British Ecological Society

Evidence and data about what we eat, where and how it’s grown are some of the most contested scientific debates in the public sphere. All along the food chain, ecological and environmental data about farming are produced by different actors at different scales. How do we ensure scientists, farmers, policymakers and the public are making […]