Who we are
Tara Garnett | Tim Jackson | Emily Lewis-Brown | John Jackson
Tara initiated, and coordinates the Food Climate Research Network.
Tara has been working on food issues for 15 years. After completing her Masters, she spent a year volunteering for a rural NGO in Rajasthan, India, where she generally discovered the smallness of her place in the world and became increasingly interested in food and its relationship with sustainability. When she returned to the UK she joined the organisation Sustain (then the National Food Alliance and SAFE Alliance), as a volunteer, but she soon secured funding to carry out research into the potential community, environmental and health benefits of urban food growing activities in the UK (fruits of this research were Growing Food in Cities and City Harvest).
A few years later she joined Transport 2000 (now the Campaign for Better Transport), initially to work on rail freight. Her main interest, though, was in ‘food miles’ and she managed to secure funding to set up Wise Moves. This research project sought to explore the relationship between food, transport and CO2 - and it came to the conclusion that the whole thing was very complicated…
It was during the course of her Wise Moves research that Tara came across early studies suggesting that the food chain as a whole contributed very substantially to the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. This made a very strong impression on her; she felt there was a real need for an entity that focused specifically on food and climate change. Such an entity should bring people with diverse knowledge, attitudes and interests together to understand how the food system contributes to GHGs, and how we might reduce them. Hence her idea of a Food Climate Research Network. With support and invaluable input from Professor Tim Jackson at Surrey University, a funding proposal was made and in 2004, the FCRN was born.
Tara writes and presents extensively on food and climate change. Her main interests lie in the relationship between food GHG reduction objectives and other social and ethical concerns, including human health, animal welfare, international development and biodiversity.
Tara has a 1st class degree in English literature from Oxford University and a Masters in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She very much hopes that one day she will find time to finish her PhD.