Environment: How should we be growing food to help create a healthier future?

And being able to grow some of your own can be so hugely rewarding and satisfying. Growing food can be hard work, and helps you appreciate how much effort has been put into the fresh food on the supermarket shelves.

We are increasingly aware of the importance of healthy food, grown in a healthy way, on both our health and planetary health.

In order to stay well, we need to eat well. Sadly our health is declining; much of this is due to a poor diet, with little fresh food and too much processed food.

Intake of fats, sugars and processed food has increased massively, resulting in the incidence of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer going through the roof.

Conversely, every plant that we eat is full of phytonutrients, minerals and vitamins, and eating a diversity of these every day is the basis for maintaining good health. Eating a variety enhances the biome of bacteria that live in our gut thereby enhancing our immune response and our ability to resist a wide range of diseases.

Our food system is increasingly flawed. Reasons for this are multiple and include the power of the food Industry, advertising, government policy, agricultural policy and land management, over dependence on imports, household economics, education with many children believing that food “comes from the supermarket” and don’t have a concept of how food is grown.

Most of us have become so far removed from how we are tied to the Land, that, unlike our ancestors, awareness of the growing of food has been utterly dislocated from our lives.

But we are part of the plant ecosystems and without them, we wouldn't survive for very long.

The way that we are growing food is causing terrible harm to the Land. The almost complete disregard for maintaining the quality of farming land, by trying to extract as much as possible from it and farm intensively, means that the soil is becoming progressively depleted, decreasing its capacity to grow good crops.

In England and Wales, about half of the organic carbon has been lost from arable lands and there are big concerns about microplastic contamination of land.

Food has been traded for centuries. We import 46% of our food. Although we have a wonderful variety of food available in the shops, many British people cannot afford to buy it.

The global food system has become increasingly exploitative of both people and land.

How can it be that we can buy green beans flown from Kenya or Peru whilst the very people that grow these are unable to feed their own children?

Moreover, intensive farming and climate change is turning arable land into desert, so that increasingly, in many countries, people can no longer live off their land.

We shouldnt be flying food around the World. Why are we importing apples from New Zealand when we have had some of the best orchards in the World?

Food needs to be produced locally, with short supply chains. Some of our vegetable shops, like Sharps on Abbeydale Road, sign the produce that has travelled short distances.

We need to produce more food here in our own country, so that we can feed ourselves in a way that is both people and planet-friendly.

Our expectations of what is available and when needs to be more grown-up. We need to learn once again to respect the seasons, and acknowledge that strawberries are a summer fruit, and not expect to buy them in December.

Intensive farming in southern Spain, so that the rest of Europe can consume summer vegetables throughout the year, is killing that region, and is farmed by foreign workers living and working in appalling conditions.

Our food systems need to be more equitable and more sustainable.

Soil needs to be restored using principles of regenerative, organic and conservation farm management.

The work of the Sheffield Regather Cooperative does just that, and has just been shortlisted for a BBC Food and Farming Award!

Covid taught us that those who could access their own grown food were advantaged over people who did not. Many of us will have at least access to window space and window boxes or some garden space.

The joy of being able to grow your own food and put it on your own kitchen table is absolutely huge. In doing so, we can begin to follow permaculture principles: Earthcare, Futurecare and Fairshare.

For those only just beginning on the food growing adventure, particularly if you only have a small space to do it in, I would recommend trying to grow salad, which can be grown in succession so that you have fresh salad most of the year.

Herbs can also be quite easy to grow. Using vertical space such as walls and frames, allows us to grow many more beans and courgettes. Once you get the bug for growing food, you will love it!