Shaken Not Burned

Plastic is embedded in almost every everyday consumer product. It packages our cosmetics, holds our cleaning sprays, and lines our personal care items. It is light, waterproof, and cheap, making it the default choice for fast-moving consumer goods. However, the vast majority of these plastic-wrapped products are designed to be used for just minutes, leaving behind a legacy of waste and microplastics that lasts for centuries. This week’s episode, the first of our arc dedicated to plastic...

A summer of extreme heat and drought cut forecast European grain production by 16.7 million tonnes — worth around €3.2 billion at current prices. It is a stark reminder of how quickly climate shocks can expose vulnerabilities in food supply. But when crops fail or farmers struggle, the question often becomes: how can farmers do things differently? The answer from our agriculture series is: they can’t — at least, not alone. In our last three episodes, we focused on agriculture, looking at the ...

We know that agriculture needs to change. But what if changing what happens on individual farms doesn’t change the food system around them? This week, Felicia talks to Ivo Degn, co-founder of Climate Farmers and founder of Re:Source, about why agricultural change depends on more than farming practice alone, and what a regenerative food system actually looks like. They discuss measurement, place, markets, infrastructure and the tension between efficiency and resilience. Ivo also makes an unexp...

We often talk about changing farming as though the main question is what farmers should do differently. But a farm sits inside a much bigger system. In this week’s episode, Shaken Not Burned co-host Felicia talks to Richard Zaltzman, chief executive of Europe's food innovation community EIT Food, about the impact of that system. It starts with the idea of a landscape: not just a collection of farms, but the buyers, processors, financiers, insurers and other businesses that shape what farmers ...

Food security is back on the agenda. In recent years, disrupted supply chains, war, extreme weather and volatile energy and fertiliser prices have all shown how quickly problems elsewhere can affect what food is available, where it comes from and what it costs. At the same time, there are growing concerns about the condition of the system producing that food: climate risk, declining soil health, water stress, emissions and biodiversity loss. Unfortunately, that’s where the conversation often ...