Sustainability

Hay on Earth is a sustainability-focused series of events at Hay Festival. At the Hay on Earth Forum each year we explore current issues, new developments and technical advances.

At this year’s Forum we bring you four events focusing on the future of food. This full day ticket gives you entry to all four events:

• 2.30pm Louise Gray and Kimberley Wilson talk to Andy Fryers: Food Anxiety
• 4pm Jake Fiennes: Land Healer
• 5.30pm Louise Gray, Ian Rasmussen and Bryce Evans: Milltir Sgwar: The Next Chapter – A Square Meal on a Square Mile
• 7pm Gareth Wyn Jones, Mark Lynas, Solitaire Townsend and Martin Wright: Food for the Future – Should We Trust in Tech?

Who picked your Fairtrade banana? Where do all the wonky carrots go? And if we’re being encouraged to eat five-a-day, just how much damage are we doing to the world we live in through food miles? We all know that as a nation our mental health is in crisis. But a crucial part of the solution – what we eat – is being ignored. Gray, author of Avocado Anxiety and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From, tracks food from farm to fruit bowl, unpacks the dilemmas we face in trying to eat well and ethically, and helps us discover the impact that growing fruits and vegetables has on the planet. Psychologist Wilson, author of Unprocessed: How the Food we eat is Fuelling our Mental Health Crisis, reveals the role of food and nutrients in brain development and mental health. They talk to Hay Festival’s Sustainability Director Andy Fryers.

Jake Fiennes is on a mission to heal the land we’ve destroyed, and change the face of the British countryside. The conservation manager at Holkham in Norfolk, one of the country’s largest historic country estates, has taken a radical approach to habitat restoration and agricultural work, which has brought back wetlands, hedgerows, birds and butterflies over 25,000 acres of land. He takes us through the farming year and the natural cycle of the seasons, and delivers a manifesto urging us to rethink our relationship with the natural world before it’s too late.

The way we consumed food changed during the lockdown, and has continued to evolve as we face new challenges with our food supply. Is food globalisation still viable in an uncertain age of dramatic geopolitical realignment, climatic and environmental peril and colossal challenges to food production and distribution? We urgently need fresh, innovative and sustainable ideas to address such existential threats.

Louise Gray is author of Avocado Anxiety and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From; Ian Rasmussen is a senior lecturer at the University of Chester and a Slow Food Member; and Bryce Evans is Professor of Modern World History at Hope Liverpool University. They discuss the Welsh concept of Milltir Sgwar – square mile – which promotes belonging to and being immersed in a small community. Are we bold enough to revert to a more localised approach to food production: a square meal on a square mile?

British farming is in crisis: we import a greater proportion of our food than we used to, our countryside suffers more than ever from agriculture-related pollution and biodiversity loss, and farming is a major contributor to climate change. Does technology, from high-tech, precision, smart, vertical or underground farms to lab-grown alternatives to ‘natural’ food, have the answer? And if so, could tech bring down the curtain down on 5,000 years of British agriculture? Our panel of experts – Welsh hill farmer and TV presenter Gareth Wyn Jones, author and journalist Mark Lynas, sustainability expert and author of The Solutionists: How Businesses Can Fix the Future Solitaire Townsend, and environment journalist and photographer Martin Wright – discuss whether a rewilded Britain is a feasible vision, or the worst kind of ‘techtopian’ fantasy, and if there’s a happy medium for farmers and consumers.

Our food system is one of the most successful, most innovative and most destructive industries on earth. It sustains us, but it is also killing us. Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of fast food chain Leon, creator of the National Food Strategy and author of Ravenous: How to get Ourselves and our Planet Into Shape, speaks to journalist and editor Rosie Boycott about how we can take action to make things better, drawing on health, farming, and environmental and food security.

Bring your best ideas to this solutions-focused workshop session. Facilitated by sustainability entrepreneur Andy Middleton, Chief Exploration Officer at the TYF Group, and joined by key speakers to be announced, we’ll look at the key issue of energy. We’ll discuss the scale of the issue and a range of solutions, how to action them, how they might impact on their lives and how to manage the change.

The war in Ukraine has created an unexpected energy shock. But it has also hastened a dramatic redesign in how energy is generated and consumed. New giant investments in wind, solar, hydro, nuclear and ocean power have been impressive. But there are ominous signs that the corporate commitment to move away from fossil fuels is weakening because of the big money still being made by oil and gas producers. The battle to decarbonise our energy is not even nearly won. How do we balance energy generation, energy security and energy poverty, at speed and scale?

This workshop is part of our Hay Festival Planet Assembly, a daily, inclusive conversation over ten days involving lay people, scientists, commentators and experts. We want to empower everyone to be accelerators and multipliers for the dramatic policy transformations that are needed immediately to tackle the acute climate and biodiversity emergencies.

Sign up to our free Planet Assembly daily briefing

A panel of world-class business leaders provide insight into how they’re putting sustainability at the core of all strategies, removing uncertainties driven by global challenges, and forming a foundation of security, growth and resilience. The experts will discuss the UK and EMEA findings from the United Nations Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study on Sustainability, led by Peter Lacy, global sustainability services lead and chief responsibility officer at Accenture. Joining him will be Anna Marrs, president of global commercial services at AMEX, and Jitesh Gadhia, chair of the British Asian Trust, a member of the House of Lords and former senior managing director at the Blackstone Group.

Representations of climate action in the mainstream media have often been white-washed, green-washed and diluted to be made compatible with capitalism. Yet tackling the climate crisis requires us to visit the roots of poverty, capitalist exploitation, police brutality and legal injustice. In It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World, Mikaela Loach offers a fresh and radical perspective for real climate action that could drastically change the world as we know it for the benefit of us all. Galvanising us to take action, she presents an accessible and transformative assessment of our circumstances to help mobilise us to save the future of our planet. Mya-Rose, otherwise known as ‘Birdgirl’, has visited every continent to pursue her passion – seeing first-hand the inequality and reckless destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet. The simple, mindful act of looking for birds has made her increasingly determined to campaign for their – and our – survival. Mya-Rose’s memoir Birdgirl, in which she shares how she found her voice and joy through birding during a deepening family mental health crisis, has recently been nominated for the Jhalak Prizes. The influential climate activists talk to Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace.

Tim Spector has pioneered a science-based approach to nutrition, and in Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well he delivers a guide to what we should know about food today, from environmental impact and food fraud to allergies and deceptive labelling. Spector is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London. Chris van Tulleken explains that most of our calories today come from ultra-processed foods (UPF), which make up to 60% of our diet. An NHS doctor, he reveals in Ultra-Processed People: Why do we all eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t we Stop? what UPF is doing to our bodies, from altering metabolism to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia. Crucially, he also provides solutions.

The River Tigris – the birthplace of civilisation – has been the lifeblood of ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq, but geopolitics and climate change have left it at risk of becoming uninhabitable. Writer, broadcaster and explorer Leon McCarron shares stories from his incredible, beautiful and occasionally dangerous journey by boat along the full length of the river, recounted in his book Wounded Tigris: A River Journey through the Cradle of Civilisation. Sometimes harassed by militias and relying on the generosity of a network of strangers to reach the Persian Gulf, McCarron explains why it’s crucial to save this extraordinary river, and what its survival, or destruction, could mean for us all.

Bring your best ideas to this solutions-focused workshop session. Facilitated by sustainability entrepreneur Andy Middleton, Chief Exploration Officer at the TYF Group, and joined by key speakers to be announced, we’ll look at the key issue of health. We’ll discuss the scale of the issue and a range of solutions, how to action them, how they might impact on their lives and how to manage the change.

Our health systems are creaking due to ageing populations, Covid, and recruitment and funding challenges. The impact on wellbeing of the climate emergency and loss of biodiversity is serious and not yet fully understood. Our bodies are not built to handle the new stresses of heat, pollution and the breakdown of natural systems. We need a new map for change that meets the needs of current and future generations. How do we create an economy that puts the health of people and nature first?

This workshop is part of our Hay Festival Planet Assembly, a daily, inclusive conversation over ten days involving lay people, scientists, commentators and experts. We want to empower everyone to be accelerators and multipliers for the dramatic policy transformations that are needed immediately to tackle the acute climate and biodiversity emergencies.

Sign up to our free Planet Assembly daily briefing.

Take a photographic tour of some of Earth’s most fascinating islands with Duane Silverstein, executive director of Seacology, an NGO that works to protect threatened island ecosystems and cultures around the world. From the beautiful and exotic to the remote and unheard-of, he looks at what makes islands so special, the threats they face, why they must be saved, and how working respectfully with indigenous islanders is crucial.

Bring your best ideas to this solutions-focused workshop session. Facilitated by sustainability entrepreneur Andy Middleton, Chief Exploration Officer at the TYF Group, and joined by key speakers to be announced, we’ll look at the key issue of food. We’ll discuss the scale of the issue and a range of solutions, how to action them, how they might impact on their lives and how to manage the change.

Food supplies are under intense pressure and what we’ve taken for granted is no longer guaranteed. To continue functioning, local economies and sustainable livelihoods must be able to thrive, both in the UK and all producer countries. Plant and animal diversity, as well as the welfare of farmed and wild species, must be protected. How can we design a food production system that reverses damage to nature and restores climate balance?

This workshop is part of our Hay Festival Planet Assembly, a daily, inclusive conversation over ten days involving lay people, scientists, commentators and experts. We want to empower everyone to be accelerators and multipliers for the dramatic policy transformations that are needed immediately to tackle the acute climate and biodiversity emergencies.

Sign up to our free Planet Assembly daily briefing.

Welcome to the world of seaweed, one of the most versatile plants on our planet both for biodiversity and human use. Critically important in the natural world as a diverse habitat, seaweeds also are tremendously versatile; their uses range from food to clothing and an alternative to plastic, as well as being key to coastal protection and fisheries enhancement. Vincent Doumeizel, senior advisor for United Nations Global Compact, director food programme at Lloyd’s Register Foundation and author of The Seaweed Revolution, leads an interactive showcase with some of the world’s best seaweed specialists.

As the climate, biodiversity and food supply crises become ever more urgent, George Monbiot and Minette Batters debate the major issues facing farming and society, and the plans for future food production from the small-holding to the astonishing potential of new food technologies, such as precision fermentation. What are the implications for consumers, farmers and the living world? Monbiot is a Guardian columnist and the author of Feral, Regenesis and Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. He won the Orwell Prize for journalism in 2022 for his decades-long commitment to neglected environmental issues. Minette Batters is a farmer and the President of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales.

In Nomad Century, science writer and broadcaster Gaia Vince – the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize – presents an urgent investigation of the most underreported, seismic consequence of climate change: how it will force us to change where – and how – we live. With every degree of temperature rise, a billion people will be displaced from the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. But the reality is that huge swathes of the world are becoming uninhabitable. Vince, in a rousing call to arms, describes how we can plan for and manage this unavoidable climate migration while we restore the planet to a fully habitable state. She talks to Tom Bullough, author of Sarn Helen.

Bring your best ideas to this solutions-focused workshop session. Facilitated by sustainability entrepreneur Andy Middleton, Chief Exploration Officer at the TYF Group, and joined by key speakers to be announced, we’ll look at the key issue of mobility. We’ll discuss the scale of the issue and a range of solutions, how to action them, how they might impact on their lives and how to manage the change.

Creating sustainable mobility goes far beyond reducing emissions. Greening how we all travel will improve the lives and livelihoods of billions of citizens around the world. How dramatically are we willing to change the way we move? How might a combination of new technologies, walking and cycling radicalise our behaviour and innovate what we take for granted? We want to hear your experiences. Come to share ideas that will inspire new ways to move around efficiently and sustainably.

This workshop is part of our Hay Festival Planet Assembly, a daily, inclusive conversation over ten days involving lay people, scientists, commentators and experts. We want to empower everyone to be accelerators and multipliers for the dramatic policy transformations that are needed immediately to tackle the acute climate and biodiversity emergencies.

Sign up to our free Planet Assembly daily briefing.

Our planet is in peril, and we can no longer dodge the arrival of disastrous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown that will come as a hammer blow to global society and economy. Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, offers a post-COP26 perspective on the climate emergency, acknowledging that it is now practically impossible to keep this side of the 1.5°C dangerous climate change guardrail, and presenting a blunt but authentic picture of the sort of world our children will grow old in, and our grandchildren will grow up in.

Diwigdi Valiente is an indigenous leader from the Guna peoples of Panama with more than 10 years of experience as a social entrepreneur and consultant on sustainability. A passionate protector of the ocean, they founded the Burwigan Project, an art collective that inspires actions against climate change and plastic pollution within the Panamanian population and indigenous communities. Former President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed is a politician, activist and founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party. He is currently serving as the nineteenth speaker of the People’s Majlis.