Food

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.

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.

Come to Andrew and Rachel Giles’ farm with local vet Barney Sampson and agronomist Jonathon Harrington to see how their herd of dairy cows produce most of their milk from grass. You can enter the milking parlour and help to milk some of the cows, as well as see the young calves. Learn how the cows are fed and find out how their four stomachs enable them to digest grass. You can taste samples of the dairy products, and a local cheese maker will explain the art and science beneath the rind.

With thanks to Andrew & Rachel Giles for welcoming us to their farm.

Please wear walking boots or Wellingtons and waterproof clothing in case of inclement weather. These are visits to real working farms and are suitable for anyone interested in learning more about food and farming. Families are welcome but children must be supervised at all times.

From creating simple yet tasty recipes with low-cost store cupboard ingredients to creating the Vimes ‘Boots’ index to measure the cost of basic foodstuffs and inflation, Monroe is the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. She discusses her new collection of recipes, Thrifty Kitchen, and talks about her activism around ensuring everyone has access to delicious, nutritious food.

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.

Cookbooks from London’s iconic River Cafe have inspired and created many cooks over the years, but in The River Cafe Look Book the restaurant has now created its first cookbook with beginner cooks and children in mind. It includes more than 50 iconic recipes, each of which has been masterfully adapted and revised by the River Cafe chefs specifically for those new to cooking. Ruth Rogers, who co-founded River Cafe with friend Rose Gray, speaks about encouraging everyone to cook, and about her career as a chef.

A world-leading economist, in Edible Economics Ha-Joon Chang makes challenging economic ideas more palatable by plating them alongside stories about food from around the world. He uses histories behind familiar food items – where they come from, how they are cooked and consumed, what they mean to different cultures – to explore economic theory. In this thought-provoking event Chang will show that getting to grips with the economy is like learning a recipe: if we understand it, we can change it – and, with it, the world. He talks to Polly Russell, food historian and curator at the British Library.

The television presenter – recently seen on screens on Great British Menu – will chat to comedian Cariad Lloyd while she demonstrates recipes from her long-awaited first cookbook, The Pepperpot Diaries. Drawing on her heritage, Andi Oliver’s recipes include cherished ingredients and vibrant flavours used in traditional and new ways, creating simple dishes that will bring the unbeatable tastes of Caribbean cooking to your table. Join Oliver for a mouthwatering conversation about all things food and family.

Nothing is off the menu in this frank, revealing and very funny show. In her first ever live performance, Prue Leith will take us through the ups and downs of being a successful restaurateur, novelist, businesswoman and Great British Bake Off judge – feeding the rich and famous, cooking for royalty and even poisoning her clients.

In the second half of the show she’ll be joined on stage by Clive Tulloh, who will chair a Q&A giving you the chance to ask those questions you’ve always wanted to hear Prue’s take on. She says: “I’ve never done a stage show before and at 82 I’m probably nuts to try it, but it’s huge fun, makes people laugh and lets me rant away about the restaurant trade, publishers, TV and writing, and sing the praises of food, love and life.”

Agronomist Jonathon Harrington and vet Barney Sampson lead a tour of Trevithel Court, a traditional mixed farm with orchards supplying apples for Bulmers, Westons and other cider producers in Herefordshire and Wales. Walk among the apple trees and learn about cider production; look inside a beehive and learn how bees make honey and store it for the winter, and why they are so essential for pollination. You can sample some of the cider and honey produced on the farm. See the quality beef cattle fed with the grass and arable crops grown on the farm and the machinery used for crop production and harvesting. Trevithel Court is run by David James in partnership with his son Will James, the fourth generation of the family to farm here.

With thanks to David & Catherine James and family for welcoming us to their farm.

Please wear walking boots or Wellingtons and waterproof clothing in case of inclement weather. These are visits to real working farms and are suitable for anyone interested in learning more about food and farming. Families are welcome but children must be supervised at all times.

Queen of baking Mary Berry returns with her definitive baking collection in Mary Berry’s Baking Bible. The baker and television host presents her most mouth-watering bakes, including classic foolproof recipes as well as new creations. Join her in conversation with Gaby Huddart, editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, for a delicious discussion about all things baking, as well as a glimpse into her long-running and varied career, from training at the Cordon Bleu to publishing cookbooks and presenting Great British Bake Off. Plus, Berry shares tips on how to create the perfect baked goods every time. Cake, unfortunately, not included.