Feeding the World

With the global population climbing at an unprecedented rate, food production becomes paramount. With Britain on the cusp of the greatest agricultural upheaval since mechanisation, our relationship with global food production is to be reinvented. Together these elements give our speakers much to discuss.

Dr Shima Barakat, EIT Food

As both an entrepreneur and an educator with an appointment at the University of Cambridge for more than 11 years, Shima is heavily involved with EIT Food, a consortium of 50+ European university and industrial partners with €400 Million which aims to boost the skills and entrepreneurial spirit in the sector and unlock the potential of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). EIT Food aims to address the sustainability of the food system in Europe.

Shima has held an appointment at the University of Cambridge for more than 10 years, and prior to joining the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs was the Head of Entrepreneurial Learning Programmes at the Entrepreneurship Centre of the Judge Business School.

Jason Beedell, Strutt & Parker

Jason joined Strutt & Parker in February 2016, bringing 20 years of property experience. He set up and ran Smiths Gore’s rural research team from 1999 to 2016, specialising on the farmland market, agricultural rents, shoot benchmarking, rural portfolio analysis and the rural economy. He has lead research projects for a wide range of public sector clients, including the Scottish Government, Highways England and the Countryside Agency. He provides information and analysis to institutional and private sector clients, including The Crown Estate, the Church Commissioners for England and Assured Food Standards. He is a chartered surveyor, chartered environmentalist and a member of the Society of Property Researchers.

Matt McLaren, Entomics

Each year over 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted globally, that's about 1 trillion US dollars of lost value. If food waste were its own country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. With an increasing population and modern lifestyles, the burden of food waste on society and the environment is set to increase in the future. Traditional composting solutions are difficult to commercialise at large scale, while modern technology like anaerobic digestion is capital intensive and reliant on government subsidies. Entomics develops Insect biomass conversion (or insect farming), where waste is fed directly to insects. These in turn convert low value biomass into higher value insect mass, rich in proteins, fats and chitin. These can in turn be used as sustainable inputs for a variety of sectors, most notably high quality animal feeds demanded by the aquaculture sector & premium pet food markets.