Courtauld 2025 includes a Water Ambition, in
partnership with WWF, Rivers Trust and others.
One of its objectives is for food and drink
businesses to work together in key sourcing
areas to help safeguard this critical resource.
More than 80 food & drink businesses and onthe-ground delivery organisations are now
working together on pilot projects to reduce
water stress and protect water sources for
communities and nature. It is estimated that
70% of global freshwater is used in food
production.
The next area identified for focus is southern
Spain; a critical production area for fruit & veg
into UK supply chains, projected to be
increasingly exposed to a high degree of water
stress through climate change. Food and drink
businesses operating or sourcing from this
region face exposure to supply disruption and
instability in trading conditions if these climaterelated risks aren't mitigated.
Water is a shared resource within a catchment
and so solving individual water problems in
isolation won't help fully alleviate the risks. A
catchment-based approach is needed, to target
interventions for greatest effect and overall
outcome.
Collective water stewardship
activity in Southern Spain
Food Foundation
Plating up
Progress report
In July, the Food Foundation started widening the
scope of their food sustainability benchmarking
report to include wholesalers. Currently only the
two largest wholesalers are benchmarked but it's
our understanding that the scope will gradually
widen to include smaller operators. We welcome
this step to increase transparency to guide
decision making in procurement, and you can
look at the ratings here: https://
foodfoundation.org.uk/plating-up-progresshome-page/plating-up-progress-wholesalers/ It
To meaningfully impact water availability in this
area, there needs to be a thorough
understanding of the water issues, local water
governance, water users, etc.
Bidfood and Bidfresh are glad to join retailers
and fresh produce businesses in club-funding a
joint scoping study.
For our customers, this means we are taking
steps to better understand water and climaterelated risks in a key sourcing region. We're
helping to identify where and how to best target
efforts to improve supplier resilience and we are
helping to play a part in mitigating climaterelated risks.