The two farms in Senegal that supply many of the UK's vegetables During winter in Britain fresh produce is sent by cargo ship from the West African nation every week.

For the BBC News I’ve written a feature about the two farms in west Africa producing huge amounts of food for the UK and parts of Europe… a follow up to a radio programme I made with reporter Jack Thompson.

bbc.in/4tN0KL4

And also… to reassure, we’ll be definitely be covering in more depth in a month or so… as you’ll have heard… this edition was setting out some of the big stories so far in ‘26

Hello Annie, it wasn’t a 15 min segment & Dr Unwin said he’s following events with a degree of scepticism (his interest as mentioned is use of low carb / high fat diets for his T2D patients). A much longer sequence in the programme highlighted the role of agriculture + livestock in nature loss.

I’ve a new book being published! ‘From the Sea’ is a journey into watery and endangered worlds & includes stories from Eating to Extinction + new material. Most thrilling is that it’s part of a series: ‘Oceans, Rivers & Streams’ which explores humanity’s relationship with nature & all things aquatic

The Food Programme - Are We Prepared? Could the UK Feed Itself in a Crisis? - BBC Sounds Five years after the first lockdown Dan Saladino asks if food systems are better prepared.

When fragile infrastructure can shut down an international airport what does it reveal about the food system in the face of crisis? In this edition of BBC Radio 4’s Food programme I look at the dependence on a network of warehouses in the UK to prepping in Stockholm www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Thanks for listening. It was an interesting programme to make and at the very least it’s good that Hugh has got people taking about what restaurants are for (and how he sees that). On the wine question, I think he qualified that in the programme. It’ll be interesting to follow his progress!

For this year’s BBC Food & Farming Awards… I presented the team behind Groundswell with the Food Innovation award. Many farmers want to change and draw on the very latest science to better understand how they can work with nature. There’s a knowledge gap. Groundswell is helping to fill that gap.

The Food Programme - Frankopan on Food - BBC Sounds Peter Frankopan, author of Silk Roads and Earth Transformed, on food, history & the future

Peter Frankopan’s books, including The Silk Roads, New Silk Roads & The Earth Transformed… aren’t explicitly food books but they’ve all made me think differently about the role of food in human history. Here’s the radio programme I made with him. Listen on BBC Sounds www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...