BEYOND STRATEGY: WHY THE FUTURE OF FOOD HINGES ON GOVERNANCE — AND WHAT BUSINESSES MUST DO NOW
by Helen Ireland, Head of Veris
The UK government’s newly announced Food Strategy Advisory Board (FSAB) has landed with a promise to tackle the UK’s broken food system. Chaired by the Minister for Food Security and featuring a line-up of supermarket CEOs, public health leaders, and food system experts, the panel is being framed as a turning point.
While a very welcome step, the composition of this board raises some interesting questions about not just who is in the room but about how decisions are made, what values drive them, and whose voices are heard or left out - notably farmers, youth, communities affected by poor diets, and representation of nature or future generations.
Because here’s the truth: governance is the engine room of transformation. And unless we redesign how we govern food - from boardrooms to policy tables - we will keep repeating the same fragmented, short-term outcomes we’ve always had.
So how can businesses step up on governance?
Obesity, food poverty, biodiversity loss, climate collapse, and declining farmer livelihoods are deeply interconnected. Solving them requires more than strategy and technical solutions, although these are important. It demands governance models that can hold competing priorities and navigate trade-offs. Forward-thinking food businesses have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to model what fit-for-future governance can look like.
Not by waiting for permission, but by embodying a new social contract between business, nature, and citizens. Indeed, no longer a nice to do, but something stakeholders are increasingly asking for. From customers and employees to investors and local communities, expectations around governance are shifting. People are demanding clarity not only on what companies do, but how and why decisions are made. Here’s what this means in practice:
Create multi-stakeholder advisory councils. Move beyond traditional executive boards and sustainability committees. Build advisory structures that include farmers, youth activists, public health experts, factory workers, community leaders and citizens. Give them genuine influence, not just a seat the table, but a voice in shaping priorities, trade-offs, and investments. For example, Danone North America has established a Soil Health Advisory Board comprising farmers, agronomists, and environmental scientists to guide its regenerative agriculture strategy and Unilever’s Human Rights Advisory Group brings together independent experts including labour rights advocates, human rights lawyers, and NGO leaders to help shape Unilever’s global human rights strategy.
Appoint advocates for nature and future generations. Embed the voice of ecosystems into governance. Whether through legal proxies, scientific panels, or biomimicry advisory groups, make ecological integrity an active decision-maker. These individuals ensure that environmental integrity and the well-being of future generations are prioritized in decision-making. For example, Faith in Nature, the UK beauty brand, appointed Nature as a board member in 2022. A legal advocate now speaks for natural systems in strategic decisions. Imagine if a major retailer gave soil health or pollinator diversity a seat at the table.
Adopt values-based decision architecture. Utilise ethical frameworks like the Food Ethics Council’s “Beyond Business as Usual” to make explicit the values guiding company decisions, helping mediate trade-offs—between affordability and equity, growth and regeneration, profit and planetary health. Make visible the values behind every decision as transparency in values builds trust and strengthens stakeholder alignment. For example, Patagonia makes all major business decisions through the lens of its mission: “We’re in business to save our home planet”. It uses a values-based framework that guides everything from product design to supply chain relationships, explicitly publishing its decision criteria and trade-offs in public-facing documents.
Redesign incentives for systemic impact. Align executive and team incentives to long-term, system-positive outcomes like carbon reduction, food security, health equity, or farmer resilience, not just to commercial success. Make your governance structure accountable to more than shareholders. For example, Novozymes (part of Novonesis) and Nestlé executive bonuses to progress on their environmental and social impact goals. While Microsoft integrates ESG metrics into its performance and pay framework.
Institutionalise radical transparency. Make governance processes open and participatory by using digital platforms or public forums to share decision rationales and invite feedback. Transparency fosters trust and allows stakeholders to understand and engage with the company's decision-making processes. For example, Ørsted sets a high bar for data transparency by publishing not just its emissions and impact metrics, but also the detailed methodologies behind its calculations. This includes lifecycle analysis assumptions and how Scope 3 emissions are modelled.
What can businesses learn from participatory food democracy models?
Food businesses can also take inspiration from civil society. Around the world, a growing number of Food Councils, Food Commissions, and citizen-led platforms have been pioneering democratic, multi-stakeholder approaches to food governance; demonstrating how shared responsibility can transform the system. Models from Canada, Scotland, and Brazil have brought together citizens, farmers, health experts, Indigenous voices, and policymakers to co-create food systems that are just, resilient, and sustainable. These initiatives emphasise dialogue over dominance, place-based knowledge, and systemic thinking.
In the UK, the RSA’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) set a precedent for participatory governance by convening citizens, producers, and rural communities to shape a vision for regenerative agriculture and land use. Similarly, the Food Ethics Council has long championed participatory approaches using citizen juries, public dialogues, and ethical foresight to help organisations navigate complex food dilemmas. While the Welsh government became the first in the world to create an independent office to act as a guardian of future generations – encouraging government and public bodies to take a longer-term view on policy decisions and protect and promote the needs of future generations.
These models offer rich insight and inspiration for food businesses ready to shift from extractive governance to collaborative stewardship. They show that participatory governance isn’t just more equitable, it’s more intelligent, legitimate, and future-fit.
Conclusion: Governance is how we grow
The FSAB may signal a symbolic shift, but unless it embraces governance as a civic process, anchored in participation, ethical reflection, and ecological accountability, it risks becoming another missed opportunity.
The businesses that will thrive in the decade ahead will be those who connect the dots between climate, justice, nutrition, and culture, and connect people across the food ecosystem, from field to fork. They will redesign decision-making as a collective responsibility. They will govern not through dominance, but through dialogue.
Tomorrow’s most resilient food businesses won’t rely on top-down authority to navigate complexity. They will decentralise power and cultivate shared ownership. Governance becomes not just a structure, but a practice of continuous listening, reflection, and mutual learning.
This means moving from closed-door decision-making to inclusive, facilitated dialogue across hierarchies, sectors, and lived experiences. Power is redistributed, not retained. Through citizen panels, cross-functional circles, co-creation workshops, and inclusive advisory councils, decisions become a process of sensemaking, grounded in diverse perspectives and adaptive to change.
This shift invites a different kind of leadership: one that prioritises emotional intelligence, transparency, and the ability to host generative conversations. It recognises that legitimacy is earned through trust, not authority and that complex trade-offs are best navigated together.
Because in a fragile, interdependent world, governance is everything. And governance begins with the courage to listen.
Ready to make the shift to grow your food business through your sustainability ambitions? Bring in Veris, our expert consultants, to combine strategic vision, impactful communication and industry-leading intelligence with hands-on implementation. Contact hello@veris-strategies.co.uk