Brought to you by
RATHBONE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
Eating good food isn’t just a pleasure: it’s a responsibility, too. By making positive choices and choosing to shop locally, we can improve our health, save travel miles and enjoy really good meals. It’s better for the environment too.
The local food movement is growing in importance and Cumbria very much sits at its centre. It’s being encouraged and stimulated by the individual investment and wealth management services provider Rathbones, which is aiming to promote the message far and wide.
Rathbones has a tradition of investing and acting responsibly and aims to be a leader in this area. It is determined to create sustainable outcomes and build enduring value for its clients while making a wider contribution to society and building a lasting legacy.
The firm recently deepened its involvement in the local food movement by meeting with local business owners to ask them about their views on sustainability, which resulted in a recent panel discussion looking specifically at food sustainability in Cumbria.
The debate revealed that almost every part of the food chain has some involvement with fossil fuel usage, whether it’s in the transport, the nitrates in the fertilisers or the endless packaging – even the act of ploughing the fields releases tonnes of carbon into the air.
The food chain is responsible for most of the biodiversity loss in the world and bad diet has now overtaken tobacco as the world’s number one killer. So there are many reasons why we should be concerned about what we put on our plate.
It was a powerful and compelling message that was being shared, reinforcing the importance of buying and eating local food. Many Cumbrian businesses are passionate about this and, for some, it is at the very centre of their business model.
Among them is L’Enclume, the Cartmel restaurant which earlier this year became the first dining establishment in the north of England to win the huge accolade of three Michelin stars.
Its head chef, Paul Burgalières, who took part in the panel discussion, pointed out that the restaurant had a real connection to the land. It has its own 12-acre farm nearby where it grows nearly all its own vegetables.
“We also have chickens to produce eggs,” he added. “Farming for us is about developing a harmonic relationship between cooking and growing. It drives us every day.
“Our farmers are motivated by trying to produce the best vegetables for us to cook in the best way we can without it getting too complicated and without planning to use too many ingredients, so we understand what we eat.”
Amazing produce leads to amazing cooking, Paul adds, and the farm is seen as an extension of the kitchen. “We talk to our growers every day.”
The climate in Cumbria can be harsh at times, he points out, meaning that the growers have to think intelligently. As a result, some of the vegetables grown there are pickled and preserved for the winter.
Not a lot of restaurants can produce nearly all their own vegetables as L’Enclume can. “We compost the waste at the farm and put it back into the soil to fertilise.
“All the chefs do work really hard to produce less waste and we have an academy for young chefs to come to us and learn about cooking and how to reduce this.
“We do have to take care of the farm and it takes a lot of time, but it’s amazing. It’s a great ethos.”
PUTTING ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL AND GOVERNANCE AT THE HEART OF INVESTMENT
As an investment manager, Rathbones has a passion about local food and practises what it preaches: it has established a presence in Cumbria with an office in the county, close to Kendal.
Matt Crossman, Rathbones' stewardship director, says that food is at the centre of the sustainability debate. “A number of our clients want to feel integrated in the way they are approaching their lives and their investments.
“The big thing they are thinking about is how environmental, social and governance (ESG) can form an increasing part of the conversation about an approach to investment.”
Rathbones is guided by sustainable development goals in setting its ESG agenda, Matt adds: “One of the most challenging of these is the goal for zero hunger by 2030. We were making great progress on this during the early part of the last decade, but it has slowly begun to increase again.
“While there are about two billion people in the world who are currently obese or overweight, there are also about 815 million people categorised as hungry. That is some nine per cent of the global population.”
With global population projected to rise by two billion by 2050, nothing less than a complete step change is required in the way global food and agriculture is approached, he says. “Investors will play a crucial role in that transition.”
There is also an interplay with climate change, Matt says, with livestock in particular accounting for CO2 emissions. Unless the issues are addressed, these emissions are likely to rise as the world’s population grows.
“Limiting the impact of climate change will require shifts in how much food we eat and waste, how we farm and how we use our land. We have seen some fantastic local examples, but we have to think about how we begin to spark transitions at the global level.”
Local farms will be key to this, he believes. “About 90 per cent of the farms in the world are family or individually run and there are reasons to be cheerful.
“Technology can help cut waste, there are innovations in retail, artificial intelligence can assist, CO2 can help make sustainable foods and clean energy in supply chains will make a huge difference."
Click here to watch the full webinar.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article