The global food system is intricately linked to many of the greatest problems facing the world today, from the rise of non-communicable diseases, childhood hunger and food insecurity to environmental degradation, species loss and climate change. Over recent decades, the food system has become increasingly wasteful, processed and environmentally damaging. Along with the possibility of rising temperatures, water shortages, pest species outbreaks and other social and economic challenges, coordinated action is required at multiple levels of society to ensure that our food system can keep pace with increased demand over coming decades. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the vulnerabilities of the UK food system into sharp relief. Images in 2020 of panic buying, empty grocery shelves and queues at food banks, while relatively short-lived, offered a glimpse into the potential impact of longer-term and more sustained shock and disruption to food supplies. This is against a backdrop of rising levels of food insecurity, childhood hunger, precarious employment in the agri-food sector and continued environmental degradation and contribution to climate change as a result of unsustainable food production practices. Yet the moment in which we find ourselves in, from building new trading relationships post-Brexit to the needs of meeting net zero, presents an unparalleled opportunity to re-orientate our food system towards a fairer, healthier, and more sustainable system of food production and consumption. One way or another change is coming but the question is, what change, in whose interest, and at whose expense? Everyone, irrespective of social or economic group, should be able to access appropriate healthy and affordable food, produced in ways that support the return of biodiversity to farmed landscapes, removes carbon from the atmosphere, and avoids polluting ecosystems, while providing meaningful and sustainable livelihoods for those working in the agri-food sector.