Last week saw the release of the International Institute for Environment and Development’s new report ‘Virtuous Circles’ which reveals how our current ‘linear’ food production processes takes between ten and fifteen calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food energy (nutrition) produced, and argues that we urgently need to replace this with more sustainable ‘circular’ systems to help us combat both rising food prices and climate change. 

The report then goes on to talk comprehensively about many wonderful and wide ranging technical changes that could take place to food production to help us bring down that oil calorie to food calorie ratio. But while it deals well with external landscape changes that would be needed to create this kind of sea change in society it doesn’t address the challenge of how you communicate this to consumers and encourage them to change the way they shop for and consume food.

At Forster, our approach is to help make adopting positive choices as simple, easy and inspiring as possible. Those choices aren’t limited to the environmental impact but also to other issues such as animal welfare and healthy eating.

One great way to introduce positive choices is to get to people early. Our work with children for the National Trust and Danone seeks to introduce children to food in its wider context allowing them to discover as much as possible for themselves rather than being ‘taught’ about it. The National Trust’s  Food Glorious Food campaign uses seeds and interactive tools to go beyond showing children how to grow food to the wider subjects of planting, harvesting, cooking and the food chain.

This integration of an idea into people’s everyday lives can work just as well with adults as it does children. We recently used this approach to help the WWF launch its Livewell campaign, developing messages and recruiting high profile chef Valentine Warner to create ‘Livewell’ recipes for consumer magazines. 

It is these small internal shifts in public perceptions that can cause the momentum for a much larger social movement at the other end of a virtous circle.

For more information on the Virtous Circles visit the IIED here or come and have a chat with us - info@forster.co.uk