Fork to farm: reverse engineering a food system

Using bean varieties newly developed for UK growing conditions (URBeans), the BeanMeals project explored how to pursue ‘fork to farm’ systemic innovation in the food system to transform institutional catering and home-cooking towards healthier diets with lower environmental impact while also enhancing local and national enterprise. Action research, underpinned by a new systems thinking framework, centred on six primary schools and ten households in Leicester and Leicestershire (UK), set against a review of City-, County- and national-level school food policies. Three demand scenarios were developed based on increasing UK average daily consumption from 8.5g to 17g, 34g and 50g together with three enterprise opportunities (‘Community Enterprise’, ‘Artisanal Entrepreneurs’ and ‘Food Giants’) to satisfy these demands in different ways. The health, environmental and economic benefits and trade-offs of scaling UK beans were analysed, showing overall benefits to health, benefits to the environment depending on the method of land conversion and pest management, and varied economic benefits depending on the scaling method employed.