Time 2:30pm

Chair: Nigel Barden, presenter and food writer

Panel: Joanna Blythman, writer, Peter Kendall, President NFU, Henry Dimbleby. co-founder Leon Restaurants, Julia Falcon, Love Food Hate Waste Campaign

Can we afford real food in today’s economic climate?

The premise of the Real Food Festival is to promote small producers, traditional techniques, locally produced food, production methods that are environmentally benign and with better standards of animal welfare – ethical food – sustainable food – this is what we call real food. But with rising food prices and an economic downturn, can we still make the case that people should spend more money to buy ethical food? Organic sales are dropping, but sales of local and fair-trade have remained stable. A wave of enthusiasm for growing your own food has swept the country.

Does making a choice for real, sustainable food need to cost more and what are society’s costs of not making these choices?

Should our priority be to feed the rising numbers who can’t even access healthy affordable food, before we worry about how and where the food has been produced?

Our panel will debate these questions and explore what impact the economic downturn might have on the UKs food and farming system.