About BAFR-UK
Overview
BAFR-UK aims to identify interventions in the food system to make it less vulnerable to external shocks over the long term. This is being undertaken using a wide range of research methods, expertise and techniques, including much collaboration with stakeholders from across and beyond the food system, in collaboration with our project partners.
Tools produced for project research, and published open source include the Barefood, the Food Systems Game and the Future Food Calculator.
The project runs from September 2024 until 31 August 2027.
Find out more about the project's scope.
Work packages
Work Package 1
WP1 involves drawing on a wide range of stakeholders' expertise and insights to inform and support the other work packages, wider project outcomes and ensure real-world applicability of our research. This is being done through workshops, co-hosted with our partners, as well as interviews and focus groups. We have funded six policy and research focused works placements for doctoral students through the FoodSHINES project.
The findings will be used to co-produce actionable insights and policy briefs to help government and society build resilience in our food system.
Expert stakeholder consultation
BAFR has been convening diverse voices of expert actors through workshops co-organised with our partners and their contacts. We have brought together farmers, small food businesses, retailers, manufacturers, insurers, investors, government and civil society organisations to explore complex questions around challenges to resilience.
These workshops were co-hosted with Food Ethics Council, Food Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC), Better Food Traders, Sustain and WWF. They explored complex questions around strengthening the UK food system against multiple, intersecting crises. These included the” what” and “how” of successfully implementing interventions, and building resilience to multiple concurrent threats.
FoodSHINES placements
BAFR has hosted FoodSHINES policy placements and a workshop, resulting in six food system policy reports.
Work Package 2
WP2 involves a systematic literature review exploring caused of food system breakdown from around the world. In addition, the team will map pathways to food system vulnerability.
We have designed Barefood, the Food Systems Game to model shocks and interventions in the UK food system. The game uses backcasting, is openly available, and is feeding into all our other research.
Literature review
A systematic, qualitative literature review is exploring potential shocks and cascading risks that lead to food system vulnerability around the world, validating themes previously identified by BAFR team members. This task will also feed into Barefood, the Food Systems Game.
Mapping pathways to food system vulnerability
The pathways to vulnerability from food system shocks is being explored by building from and updating an existing global database of conflict related to environmental resources. Previous work on global escalation pathways relevant to the UK context will be updated and validated with a quantitative analysis on the newly collected data on food chaos. The Gale database of articles will be used.
Barefood, the Food Systems Game
Working with Serious Game Designer Matteo Menapace, we have designed Barefood, a serious game to model shocks and interventions in the UK food system. The game uses backcasting, and is being played around the UK with diverse expert audiences. The findings are feeding into our other workstreams (WP3) and the interactive tool (WP4).
Work Package 3
Work Package 3 focuses on identifying practical actions that can strengthen the resilience of the UK food system to future shocks and disruptions. Working with stakeholders from across food production, processing, distribution, retail, policy and civil society, we are developing and prioritising interventions that can help create a more resilient food future.
Co-design
We are working with stakeholders from across the food system through a series of participatory workshops delivered in partnership with the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC), Better Food Traders, Sustain and WWF. Together, participants explore vulnerabilities within the food system, share perspectives on resilience, and co-design interventions that could improve the UK's ability to anticipate, withstand and recover from future disruptions.
These activities are generating a broad range of potential interventions spanning the three functions of resilience: robustness, recovery and reorientation.
Prioritise
The workshops and wider engagement activities are generating a diverse range of ideas and perspectives on how resilience can be strengthened across the UK food system. To help identify areas of agreement and prioritise potential actions, WP3 is using a Delphi process to move from divergence to convergence across stakeholder perspectives.
Through a series of structured and anonymous surveys, participants will review, refine and evaluate interventions identified during the project. The process will help identify those interventions considered most impactful, feasible and beneficial for strengthening UK food system resilience, while also highlighting areas where stakeholder perspectives differ. Findings will contribute to a package of recommendations for Defra and UKRI.
Prepare
Alongside the intervention work, WP3 is developing ADAM (Acute Disaster Assessment Model), a practical resilience assessment tool for farmers and land managers. ADAM will support users in exploring how climatic, geopolitical, technological, societal and financial shocks could affect farming businesses and production systems.
By helping users identify vulnerabilities across farm operations, infrastructure, inputs and outputs, the tool will support resilience planning and encourage proactive consideration of future risks. ADAM will be developed and tested iteratively with stakeholders to ensure it is practical, accessible and relevant to end users.
Outputs
WP3 will deliver:
- A stakeholder-informed database of food system resilience interventions.
- A prioritised shortlist of resilience recommendations for Defra and UKRI.
- ADAM, a practical resilience assessment tool for farmers and land managers.
- Academic publications, policy briefings and practical resources to support food system resilience.
Work Package 4
Work Package 4 will produce an interactive decision support tool allowing decision makers to explore the relative benefits and trade-offs of different combinations of interventions. This will be based on detailed quantitative modelling as well as scoping reviews, stakeholder consultation and findings from the Barefood serious game and literature reviews.
It will also produce a public-facing report with recommendations for policy based on the findings of the interactive support tool (a.k.a. model).
Open source code, documentation and unit tests in AgriFoodPy are available for modellers to get involved.
The model builds on the existing Future Food Calculator which currently models the UK agri-food system, showing how policies, farming practices and technologies impact greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and self-sufficiency. We are expanding its scope to include:
- Modelling of UK food availability based on combinations of system shocks and interventions. For example, we could quantify food availability from a poor harvest due to drought in East Anglia compounded by trade restrictions, mitigated by having previously improved soil health through increasing organic matter and reducing artificial fertilisers and tillage to increase moisture retention.
- Nutrition and health modelling including physical and mental health outcomes from changes in diet (e.g. due to food insecurity or changed diets due to food system changes such as diversification).
