Original subtitles

Food - we eat nearly £250 billion worth every year.

But there's a problem.

All the tasty grub we eat comes at a cost to the planet.

Our food generates more than a quarter of UK carbon emissions.

That is way more than driving or even flying.

But unlike driving and flying, we simply can't live without it.

So how can we reduce the emissions in our food system?

And what will that mean for what we eat and how it's made?

To find out, we're investigating one of Britain's favourite foods -

ready meals.

Oh, yeah!

Because making them involves every part of our complicated food system.

It is massive!

And in seeing how emissions could be reduced...

Wow. OK!

..we discover that getting them to net zero

might be the biggest challenge the food industry faces.

I have to say, you're blowing my mind a little bit.

Michelle Ackerley investigates the tech that might

temper our taste for meat...

Oh, my word.

..I investigate the retailer's eco promises...

Does that cover own-brand ready meals? No.

..and Fran Scott makes some shocking discoveries in our food bins...

Last summer I catch one of these bins,

maybe with 12 pigeons all dead.

..all to find out if it will ever be possible to get

a net-zero ready meal and what that will mean for us

and the price of our food.

Ready meals - 90% of us eat them.

Tens of millions of us enjoy them every single week.

Hi, there, I'm Justin from the BBC. I think they're expecting me.

Oh, hi. Yes... Thank you.

But how are they made?

This is the latest and most innovative food processing

and packaging technology.

These contraptions that slice, dice,

grind, portion and pack

make those oh-so-convenient ready meals the pinnacle

of modern food manufacturing.

MULTIVAC are one of the companies that make the machines

that make ready meals.

I'm meeting Liam Smith, head of product management here.

Hi, Justin. Nice to meet you. So, I've got a challenge for you.

Now, I've given this a little bit of thought and I've come up with

my own concept. It's interesting. This is my meal concept,

Justin Time For Dinner.

I've actually thought up a little jingle.

LIAM CHUCKLES

So...

"If it's dinner time, it's Justin Time."

Of course it is. I like it. Yeah. JUSTIN LAUGHS

It's strong, isn't it? Absolutely.

The meal I want to make is sausage mash and peas with gravy. OK.

What I'd like is a delicious meal, but also as close to net zero

as we can get it. Can you help me, Liam?

Let's take a look at some of the machines.

Probably starting with our Laska grinder system.

To make my sausage and mash ready meal, Liam is going to unleash some

of his state-of-the-art food processing machines.

First up...

Wow.

..the meat grinder.

So, what's this machine?

This is where we can add your special ingredients

and put it all together into the mix.

So, let's get these special spices in just in time.

Big machines like these, used up and down the country

to make ready meals, use a lot of power.

And food manufacturers across the industry

are looking for ways to reduce their CO2 emissions.

That's why Liam's latest tech has been redesigned to reduce

the power it uses.

So, recently with this machine, we changed the motor design,

reduced the power consumption by 30%.

So, it's trying to eek away at every little saving you can get.

Bit by bit, to try and eek away at those CO2 savings.

Time for machine number three.

Yeah, let's make sausages. What do I do?

Go for it, Justin. So, I push this lever here?

Push that lever with your knee. Simple as that.

Oh, there we go. Look at that.

So satisfying!

Yeah, it's looking good, isn't it?

Remember, if it's dinner time...

It's Justin Time. ..it's Justin

Time! That's it, Liam!

LIAM LAUGHS

It is unforgettable, isn't it?

Sausages made, now for the mash...

..and ANOTHER machine.

Now, we've got to the stage where we are...

We're packing Justin Time For Dinner, aren't we?

Yes, this is where we can semi-automatically

put the mashed potato into Justin's Dinner.

Look at that. You press go. Easy, isn't it?

Bangers and mash...Justin Time.

Ready meals are still as popular as ever.

And no wonder, because machines that work this fast

help some ready meals to be sold for as little as a pound.

It is kind of magical to see a production line working, isn't it?

Yeah. Stand-alone machines are one thing, but when you bolt them

all together, that's where you get the ultimate efficiency.

That speed doesn't just mean low prices,

but lower carbon emissions, too.

So, kind of hidden in carbon reduction is speed.

So, if we're able to make a full line run faster using

the automation that we've got just here, we can reduce the time

that we're running, reducing our carbon emissions.

So, the quicker you do it, the less carbon you're going to use...

Exactly. ..the less time you need to run your factory.

So, if we've got a factory that's running Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, that 20% reduction means we can knock

an entire shift off. So they don't have to bring staff in.

Need the lights on... Refrigeration, air conditioning,

we can remove all that.

So, that is part of your effort to drive down emissions? Yes.

That's one way we can bring in carbon reduction

in quite a stealthily way, through speed.

And that's what you're seeing here on this line.

Ready meals are sometimes criticised

as being ultra-processed food

and unhealthy, but we still love them, spending a whopping

£3.9 billion on them every year.

And they cause up to 16% of the greenhouse gas emissions

from our food and drink industry.

The Government has committed to making the UK net zero by 2050,

meaning we emit no more carbon dioxide than we can absorb back.

But the food industry has a plan.

Amazingly, like the rest of the economy,

food companies say they will be net zero by 2050,

and they say the ready meal, that marvel of modern food production,

will be carbon neutral in just 25 years.

But is it possible?

We are going to investigate

all stages of a ready meal's life,

from agriculture to manufacturing

and processing, packaging,

retail, even the home,

to look at how we can hope to reduce emissions,

starting at where we get them

in the first place.

This is a Tesco distribution centre in Avonmouth, just outside Bristol.

It serves more than 300 stores in Wales

and the South West of England.

And just look at it. It is massive!

If you've ever bought a ready meal from a supermarket,

it will have moved through a place like this.

And there is another crucial fact

about this distribution centre.

Ooh.

It's cold.

It's actually really, really cold

because this entire place

is one giant refrigerator.

Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket,

has 11 of these chilled distribution centres across the UK.

It is part of what is called the cold chain, the crucial system

that keeps their chilled and frozen shelves stocked all year round.

And keeping a place this size cold...

..takes a lot of power.

Hey, Rob. How are you doing? Hi, Justin. Good to meet you.

It is chilly in here, isn't it? Yeah, it's two degrees.

I'm putting my gloves on. So, two degrees is what,

about the same as your domestic fridge, your home fridge?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Except, of course, this is way, way bigger!

Add in the many fridges and freezers

in stores, and refrigeration

in British supermarkets uses 1%

of the entire country's electricity.

So, it must take a lot of energy to keep this place cold.

Well, it's measured in gigawatt hours of energy each year.

So, you measure it in gigawatts. So, I know kilowatts

from my energy metre. But that's what, a million times that?

That's right, yeah. That's a lot of energy.

Rob works for Star Refrigeration,

the UK's largest industrial refrigeration business.

They keep Tesco's distribution centres cold.

And to witness that in action is chilling.

The warm air travels up from the ground below

and we blow that air over these heat exchangers.

And then the cold air is blown out of here. Yes.

Let's have a look.

That really is cold. That wicks the heat out of your skin, doesn't it?

Yeah... Same process!

..it's two degrees lower as it's going out that side. Wow.

Having sucked the heat out of this giant fridge,

it needs to be spat out somewhere else.

And if you think your fridge at home can be noisy,

here, it's on another level entirely.

LOUD WHIRRING

So, what is that noise that we're hearing?

The noise that we're hearing is the compression of the refrigerant gas.

And the reason we're doing that is we want to extract the heat

from inside the rooms that you went in earlier,

and we need to move it to outside.

On the roof of here, we have what is called a condenser,

and that takes that heat and it passes it out to the outside air.

This is one of the major electrical consumers

in the refrigeration process.

But some clever new tech has reduced

Tesco's enormous electricity bill.

SOFT WHIRRING

Well, it's a lot quieter here, isn't it? Yes.

Much better to speak in here.

So, how do you go about saving energy?

We collect data from sensors all the way across the site.

We run a model of what the refrigeration system is doing here.

The model predicts what the theoretical performance should be,

and then we measure the actual performance and we compare

the two together.

It sounds simple, but constantly monitoring this colossal fridge

means Rob can identify faulty equipment or mechanical problems

as soon as they arise.

We're getting those issues sorted out as quickly as we possibly can.

Some of these items could go unseen for weeks or months or even years.

So, here's the question - how much energy have you saved?

Over a 12-month period, we saved

2.3 gigawatt hours of electricity.

Saving energy is good for reducing costs as well as emissions,

so it's no surprise that tech like this is increasingly used

in food distribution.

But efficient warehouses on their own will never get Tesco

to net zero.

There are a whole host of other things that cause supermarket

emissions, from heating and lighting to the thousands of diesel trucks

that send food around the country.

To find out how all of this is going to be net zero, I'm meeting

Group Head of Energy at Tesco.

What are you doing to make efficiencies,

to drive down the amount of energy you use?

We're converting our gas boilers to electric heat pump technology.

So, we're still on that journey. We're also putting doors on fridges.

We're in the process of electrifying our fleet,

whether that's from our distribution fleet or our delivery vans.

We are also using the railway.

One train actually takes 76 lorries off the road.

So, this is all about trying to find efficiency savings wherever

you can and cut the energy use. Absolutely.

Cut it down and also make it clean.

That's our aim here.

Tesco have committed to being carbon neutral across their operations

by 2035, but they still have to reduce their emissions by 74%

of current levels and have just a decade to do it in.

But even that is just a tiny part of the challenge ahead for Tesco

and for all the other supermarkets.

I'm heading to London to the trade body which represents

all the major food shops.

What do supermarkets mean when they

talk about being net zero by 2050?

Everything, basically.

So, their own operations, the emissions that come from that,

but also all the emissions that are generated by their food

producers, producing the food that then they sell to us as customers.

The supermarkets are saying they're going to be net zero

in their supermarket operations by 2035.

But when they say "supermarket operations", what does that mean?

So, that's actually quite a narrow part of their overall

emissions. Within supermarket operations,

you're probably looking at around 4% or 5% of their total emissions.

That's right.

When you look at ready meals

and the rest of our food, the shops

we buy them from are only directly

responsible for around 5%

of the emissions.

And it's only this bit that many supermarkets have said will be

net zero by 2035.

Does that cover own-brand ready meals? No.

It only covers the operations to move all of the food

around, for the sales in the store, the delivery to your homes.

You know, it could be confusing

for customers when supermarkets

are saying, "We're net zero

"in our supermarket operations

"by 2035", and you look at a ready meal and it's stamped

with the supermarket's name,

you might... Come on,

you might well think, "Well, that's part of the supermarket's operation."

Shouldn't they be clearer about what their commitments by 2035 cover?

All we are saying at this stage

is we cannot get to net zero

for all of those foods, including those ready meals,

by 2035. That target is 2050.

But there is a staging post within that, which shows how much

progress we are making towards that 2050 net zero goal.

Don't those 2050 claims burnish the supermarkets' reputations,

enhance their reputations, make them look as if they're doing something,

but actually, you've said 96% of the responsibility

lies with other businesses, other companies' farmers?

No, absolutely not. It actually lies with the...

It is the retailer that is making that claim, that is making

that statement, that is working... But they can make those claims,

but they don't have to actually change their production practices.

But... It is farmers and other suppliers who need to do that.

Absolutely... So, in a sense, my point being... Yeah.

In a sense, they're kind of passing the buck.

They're saying, "We'll take responsibility for that",

as if they are taking, but actually,

they're going to be saying to their suppliers,

"Guys, you've got to sort this out." No...

No. Costs fall with other people, don't they?

No. The ultimate judgment on whether they are successful

will lie with the retailer.

That's how we shop in this country.

The brand has taken the responsibility for it.

They have to deliver.

They have to work with their farmers and producers

to make the difference.

So it is still a 25-year wait

for net-zero ready meals,

and 95% of food emissions

come from outside

of supermarket operations.

Before they reach the supermarkets,

ready meals produce emissions

in the factories where they're made.

Earlier, I saw some machines that help process and pack

our ready meals.

But there is one crucial step we haven't yet seen - cooking.

If there's one thing that ready meals do, it's take away the hassle

of actual cooking.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can cut up an onion and rustle up a stew

as good as the next person,

but sometimes that convenience

of the ready meal, it's hard to beat.

But getting someone else to rustle up a beef stroganoff instead of me

comes at a carbon cost...

..because cooking and factories often uses fossil fuels,

and a recent study has shown ready meals have a larger carbon footprint

than home-cooked versions.

So I'm visiting a company...

Let's get it all in.

..that's trying to get the cooking emissions of a ready meal down.

Oh, yeah!

Now, I am a woman that loves a robot.

And this is a beautiful robot.

But it's hard to fathom

that it's got anything to do

with cooking up a meal.

These robotic arms are at the cutting edge of food technology.

I do recognise what it's doing.

Just like I stand in front of a cooking pot and add ingredients,

it is adding ingredients to its cooking pot.

It's just the whole thing looks more car assembly line

than country kitchen.

It is impressive, to be sure.

But how will all this help reduce emissions in cooking?

Hiya, Jake! Hi, Fran! Nice to meet you! You too.

So, Jake, what exactly can you cook in your pot?

The sort of things that we can make are all those sort of traditional,

liquid-based products that go into a ready meal.

So we could be making soups, sauces,

curries, gravies, those sorts of things.

We've got a robot that basically pulls together the different raw

materials. A bit like when you're at home, you've got your spice rack,

this robot goes and picks up a container and then weighs out

the paprika, the salt, into another vessel,

and then literally pours it into the cooking vessel.

As impressive as that robot is, when it comes to energy savings,

Jake's secret sauce is in how he cooks it.

So, what's making all the big energy savings here is

the steam-infusion cooking technology.

So, if you imagine, normally, those cooks would take around

45 minutes in a traditional cooking vessel. With the steam infusion

in there, we can cook up a tonne in less than ten minutes.

Whoa!

A traditional industrial cooking vessel heats the food

from the outside, but Jake's design uses a steam probe

inserted into the vessel to cook from the middle.

It's more efficient to cook,

but it's not the only saving.

Normally, when you're cooking industrially, you're basically

heating the liquid from the outside. Right.

Now, when you do that, it's a bit like when you cook at home.

If you've got it on high heat,

it'll burn to the side of the vessel.

So, actually, it can take more energy

to clean the vessel than it does to actually cook in it.

If you actually cook from the centre of the vessel with steam,

then we don't get any burn on whatsoever, so the actual cleaning

requirements are significantly less.

Just like my washing up at home,

anything that speeds that up has got to be good.

So, how much energy does all this save?

What kind of figures are we talking about?

So, on a traditional process, to make a tonne of sauce, you'll use

anywhere between 500 to 1,200

kilowatt hours per tonne of energy.

With the robotics and the steam-infusion technology,

we can reduce that down to less than 250 kilowatt hours per tonne,

which is obviously a big difference.

But the more exciting part of that

is that at the higher levels,

if you're using 1,000 kilowatts an hour per tonne,

you will need to be using it from fossil fuels.

Whereas, as we get down to lower than 250, we can use

electricity and renewables. That's pretty genius.

By using less power, it opens up the more renewable,

more sustainable ways of generating electricity

that wouldn't be available if you were using more power. Exactly.

Switching ready meal cooking from gas to electric

has the potential to be game-changing,

because the food and drink industry

is the biggest gas consumer in the UK.

But robots and steam infusion are only just starting

to be used here.

It would need massive investment

to tool up the whole industry,

which could drive up the price

of our super cheap

ready meals significantly.

Still, this has been an eye-opening experience for me.

It is cooking, but not quite as we know it.

We eat it as this humble meal at home, and yet the technology

that goes into cooking it in the first place is quite mind-boggling.

And yet that technology is absolutely crucial

if we are going to get anywhere near the net-zero ready meal.

JUSTIN: Greenhouse gas emissions

from manufacturing add up to 10%

of the total in our food system.

Of course, cooking a ready meal is one thing, but to get

to our dinner plates, it needs packaging.

One study by a sustainable packaging company claims 90% of ready meals

are encased in plastic.

But one of the biggest environmental challenges we face

is plastic pollution.

Packaging has come in for a really bad press in recent years,

and lots of manufacturers have reduced how much

plastic they use.

So what will a net-zero future for ready meals mean when it comes

to the packaging?

I'm back at MULTIVAC who, as well as a lot of machinery, also sell

a lot of packaging products and materials.

So I want to see what they recommend for my ready meal product line.

Right, Elliott, you are the packaging expert. Here is my product,

Justin Time For Dinner. I want a net-zero packaging for this.

I was thinking something like this. Yeah.

Yeah. Cardboard, paper... Can't get any better, can you?

Well, fortunately, Justin, you can.

So, contrary to popular belief,

when we factor in food preservation,

plastic is actually better for the environment,

in terms of carbon emissions.

I'm talking about plastic in food preservation specifically...

Yeah. ..not unnecessary use of plastic.

That's right.

Research has shown, across the lifespan, plastic can have lower

carbon emissions than alternatives, and Elliott says some clever design

can reap other rewards, too.

Take Sainsbury's mince, for example.

They recently moved from sort of

a traditional... A tray packaging. ..tray packaging

and made it into a flexible packaging and vacuum pack.

Yeah, but this is plastic.

It is, but it doubled the shelf life of the product.

It saved 75% worth of plastic on the shelf. And it's so smaller

than a tray, you can get more in a truck.

So you save a lot of trucks.

And when we do all the maths, together, you're talking about

8,000 tons of CO2 a year saved.

My aim is reducing emissions as far as possible

for Justin Time For Dinner.

Maximising shelf life while minimising product size

and packaging emissions has led Elliott to a novel idea.

I like to come up with different concepts.

This is off the Richter scale in terms of what people

would get a ready meal for. It's quite neat, isn't it?

Yeah. With its little compartments. Yeah, yeah.

Microwavable, as well.

And how long would it extend the shelf life of my product?

It's under a vacuum, so we could actually double the shelf life

of a normal ready meal by doing it that way.

I mean, I'm imagining it's going to sell pretty quickly...

Well, there you go. Yeah. So you might not need

the double shelf life! There we go, straight off.

It's still a good idea... On the shelf for day one,

sold out by day two. That's the goal. So, let me just be clear.

So, if you're saying...

You're saying plastic may be the best, most eco-friendly option

for me because it provides such good...

If carbon net zero is your goal... Yes, it is. Yeah.

..then plastic should be one of your considerations.

One of my... You're actually... One of your considerations.

Well, you're actually saying, Elliott, you think I should choose

plastic, don't you? I personally think for this one, yeah.

Your goal is carbon reduction... It is! ..and carbon net zero. Yeah.

Carbon net zero, really...

I have to say, you're blowing my mind a little bit.

Reducing packaging emissions

sounds like a trade-off.

No-one wants more plastic waste,

but we only recycle around

half of our plastic packaging

and the soft plastics Elliott is talking about

aren't typically collected by councils.

No, we're not great at recycling it, and we need to make

the downstream part of recycling easier.

What about the future?

Are there going to be net zero packaging options?

There has to be some new technology that comes through.

Packaging made out of seaweed is just one that blows my mind,

but it's going to need something different to change the game,

to be able to get to net zero.

Elliott's best advice might be plastic,

but it does still cause emissions.

There are lots of new innovations, but right now,

we're still a long way from net zero,

and emissions from packaging account for 6%

of the total emissions in our food system.

Then there's transport, until it's decarbonised

with the likes of electric vehicles,

the impact of shifting food makes up another 11%.

Add in retail and manufacturing -

that makes up a third.

But by far the biggest source

of emissions in our food system,

including ready meals,

comes from growing the food

in the first place -

agriculture.

MICHELLE: It feels like a long way from your local supermarket

to the jungles of Indonesia.

But when it comes to ready meals,

the ingredients are grown all over the world.

Take palm oil, a cooking oil that's used in many ready meals

and thousands of other products.

But it's controversial because most of it is grown on land

that was once tropical rainforest,

which is bad for global climate change.

So, is there an alternative?

Oh, wow. This is impressive, Chris.

But I've got to ask, how does this relate to palm oil?

So in this process hall, we're using a technique

called precision fermentation.

What's that, then?

Well, it's a little bit like fermentation,

but instead of making the beer or the cider,

we're actually after the cell itself.

Precision fermentation is the use of microbes to produce

useful products such as insulin.

Chris has been working for a decade to develop this technique

to produce a palm oil alternative.

Ultimately, it's a very efficient process.

We have only a fraction of the carbon emissions

of a traditional oil,

and we can see savings of over 93%

compared to palm, soybean, or even rapeseed.

So this is the finished product? That's the finished product, yeah.

With a tank of this size, then, how much oil are you getting?

Well, this is a development tank, so that's not really going to make

a big dent in the market,

and so now we need to get this to a bigger scale.

We use millions of tons of different cooking oils every year.

That's going to take a lot of fermenting,

but Chris is certainly aiming big.

Wow. OK. Chris, I mean...

This is 220,000 litres. Oh, my word!

And this is really where we have to be

to be commercially viable, because we can produce 1,000 tons

of oil a year from that.

In terms of quantity, Chris, how does this compare

to a palm oil plantation?

Just one of these reactors would be equivalent

to 250 hectares of a palm oil plantation.

Now, in a mid-size facility where we've got 20 of these,

that would be about 5,000 hectares of land which we've saved.

But will it be enough?

Annually, we use hundreds of thousands of tons of palm oil

in the UK alone.

Replacing that would require over 500 tanks of this size -

a huge investment in what's still a very new technology.

JUSTIN: While protecting global rainforests is crucial in the fight

against climate change, there are a whole host of agricultural

greenhouse gas emissions created much closer to home,

because around half of the food on our plates is produced in the UK,

and 70% of British land is used for agriculture.

Hey, Martha, I'm Justin, how are you? Hi, Justin.

Yeah, good. Nice to meet you.

Martha Hayes runs a 1,000 acre family farm in Lincolnshire.

I want to know how she's feeling about the whole net zero project.

Cup of tea? I'd love a cup of tea. Thank you.

Lovely. So, how long have you been farming for?

In short, sort of all my life.

I'm the fourth generation on this farm to be...

Fourth... So your great-grandfather got the farm?

He came here to this farm sort of 1940s.

This is him, actually. Oh!

So that's my great-grandfather.

And then this is my grandfather.

Very well dressed.

Yeah, not just dressed for - not working that day. No.

And then Dad and I in this photo.

Oh, that's lovely. So we're both farming together now.

Including Martha and her dad,

just three people work on what is

a pretty big farm,

and there's only one reason

they're able to farm all this land.

And it's basically like a mini service station, isn't it?

Yeah, it works exactly the same way.

How much does it take?

It'll take about 200 litres.

Like so many of our industries,

agriculture is built on fossil fuels,

and farmers need a lot of it.

So just put this in here, yeah? Yeah, just pop that in there.

How much do I owe you?

But, seriously, I mean, diesel must cost you a lot of money.

It's doing so many jobs on your farm.

We'd be spending between

£10,000 and £20,000 a year on fuel.

Wow, £10,000 or £20,000.

On Britain's farms, diesel is essential.

Oh, wow. Look at that!

Yeah. So this is the combine harvester.

It looks like a huge insect, doesn't it?

So this is our key part of harvest,

this is what brings in the grain.

And, of course, machinery means emissions.

As with other parts of the transport sector,

finding alternatives to diesel engines will be important.

So, Martha, I mean, fossil fuels are the absolute foundation

of modern life, aren't they?

They power our industry, they power our homes,

our transport, absolutely everything.

So how important a source of greenhouse gases

is all the diesel you use?

Yeah, so obviously it is a big source of emissions

and as farmers, we do need to address this.

So we are reducing the amount of fossil fuel

that we are using on the farm.

But, actually, this isn't the key source of emissions.

Diesel is actually the least of the problems when it comes to

greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.

In fact, CO2 emissions

only make up around 15%.

For an arable farmer like Martha,

the main villain

when it comes to global climate

change is another gas entirely -

nitrous oxide.

So the nitrous oxide comes from this stuff, yeah?

Yeah. From fertiliser?

Artificial fertiliser, exactly.

Can I have a look?

Yeah, take a look inside.

Oh, so it comes in the form of little balls? Granules, yeah.

And how many tons are you using?

On average, probably over 100 tons a year.

100 tons of this?

So we're talking, like, I don't know, 160, 170 bags

of this stuff.

This is hugely important for the production of food.

Without artificial fertiliser,

yields would be sort of 50% less.

Some estimates say without it,

we couldn't feed half the global population.

Synthetic fertiliser is made from ammonia,

which is manufactured by the Haber-Bosch process.

It involves using nitrogen from the air and hydrogen

from natural gas, mixed under

huge pressure and very high temperatures.

All that creates a massive carbon footprint -

roughly 1% of global CO2 emissions.

But an even bigger problem is caused when fertiliser is used.

Bacteria in the soil break it down and release nitrous oxide

into the atmosphere.

It's a powerful greenhouse gas,

265 times more potent

than carbon dioxide.

Fertiliser use is a major source of nitrous oxide, which,

according to the UK government, is responsible for over a quarter

of emissions from agriculture.

So a net zero future is going to need new approaches to fertiliser.

FRAN: Marine Valton is the CEO of one of a number of companies

working to develop novel fertiliser technology.

She is using a type of bacteria called blue-green algae.

So what is it that you're doing that's different

from traditional fertiliser methods?

So we are using biological fertiliser.

So we are using specific cyanobacteria,

which are coming from the soil of the farmers directly.

And these cyanobacteria are able to capture both carbon and nitrogen

from the atmosphere.

And they capture the carbon,

I suppose just like any green plant does with photosynthesis?

Exactly.

But not only that, these also capture nitrogen, you're saying?

Yes, these are the specific ones that we are using,

they capture nitrogen, yes.

That's genius.

Unlike the Haber-Bosch process,

Marine's biological fertiliser

doesn't need high temperature or pressure.

The next step for Marine

is to produce lots of her algae.

So how does something like this

go into a product that farmers

can use on their fields?

We harvest those algae and then we transform them

into a bio fertiliser,

the product that the farmers can use

on their farms and that kind of looks like that.

This is a very small sample of what we are doing.

Surely it's still going to release nitrous oxide into the atmosphere?

So, actually, we are applying those cyanobacteria alive

onto the fields.

So that means that they keep capturing nitrogen

from the atmosphere and carbon dioxide once applied as well.

You know, they will release nitrogen in a slow-release manner

for them to be uptaken slowly and then you would avoid

all of this loss that is happening with chemical fertilisers.

In theory, this technology sounds revolutionary,

but does it actually work in practice?

We've done field trials.

We've been able to show that our product actually increases

the yield by 21% compared to the chemical fertilisers.

These are just the results of a single trial

carried out by the company.

But even if these results can be verified, it will take

an enormous investment in companies like this to replace the hundreds

of millions of tons of fertiliser used globally,

perhaps affecting the price of our ready meals.

And nitrous oxide from fertiliser is only one part

of the farming story.

That's because there's another major source of greenhouse gases

on the farm...

CATTLE LOW

..animals.

JUSTIN: Oh, yeah, look, they definitely know!

Most of Martha's farm grows arable crops,

but she also has a herd of more than 100 beef cattle.

They seem quite content.

They're very chilled, happy cows, yeah.

Oh, look, here they come.

We've got to get some more.

Compared to growing crops,

raising livestock is hugely inefficient.

It takes a lot of land to raise cows

for all the milk, cheese, and beef

in our ready meals.

There's also the land used to grow their feed -

land that could be used for something else, or even worse,

land that has been cleared of forests.

A big source of emissions

with cattle is the fact that, often,

food is imported, and often it contains soya,

which is clearly a really big part of deforestation and,

you know, emissions globally.

This food is grown here on our farm,

so it's just come from a few fields away

and it's a really good way

of feeding our cattle a natural,

sustainable product that is grown here.

But more important is the gas that comes out of both ends

of these cows.

Their digestion process produces methane,

another potent greenhouse gas.

Over half of the UK's agricultural emissions come from methane.

But they do still produce methane?

We can't get away from that.

Cattle and sheep do emit methane,

but they also play

a really important part

in managing our landscape.

The way that we manage our cattle here is very extensive.

You know, we're using home-grown food to finish them.

The type of cattle that we have here

are native pedigree Lincoln Reds.

So, as a breed, they're very quick to mature,

they need low quantities of food

to get to that level of maturity.

Getting to full maturity faster

means less time emitting methane.

But, of course,

there is another option.

So, Martha, here's the question -

should we be eating beef?

Yes, I think we absolutely should.

There is an argument that we need

to be eating less beef,

but better quality beef.

So beef which is produced here in Britain has a much lower

environmental impact than that produced

in other parts of the world.

It's not the world's worst-emitting beef, but it also isn't the best.

Some farmers in the UK are now using special additives to reduce

the methane from their herds,

but many argue we should simply eat less meat.

Meat consumption is falling,

but the British public is unlikely to completely give it up

any time soon -

unless there are tempting alternatives, that is.

MICHELLE: Options like this.

It looks quite meaty, and, to be honest, I quite like it.

I mean, for vegans and vegetarians,

it's a no-brainer.

But for the committed carnivores,

the fact is - it doesn't really taste like meat.

I mean, close maybe, but it's not the real deal, is it?

Supermarkets have tried to cash in on the trend for meat alternatives

and vegan ready meals, but some consumers didn't like the taste

or the cost, and sales have stagnated,

so it may take some radical thinking

to re-excite our taste buds.

I've come to a place that calls itself Hoxton Farms.

Despite being in this decidedly non-agricultural location,

now they think they have the answer to reducing meat consumption,

even amongst the most hardcore meat eaters.

Here in hipster Hoxton, in east London,

they think they've cracked it.

Development chef Josh is cooking up something special - just for me.

So I've got a little bit of the pork fat in here.

Yeah. And I'm going to just put a bit in a pan,

because I just want you to see and smell and experience

just how it performs.

It's pork fat tissue.

This is going to sizzle, smell and feel exactly like the real thing.

So just melts in the same way?

You just start to see it starting to sizzle

and start to melt a little bit.

But get in now... You get that, like, meaty, porky-ness that...

I can smell it.

It looks like pork fat and it smells like pork fat,

but it comes from a surprising source.

It's a secret ingredient that's been designed

to revolutionise meat substitutes.

Ooh...

So this is our pork belly prototype.

If you're imagining what's kind of going into plant-based meat

at the moment... Oh, yeah. ..you'd never get this from it.

You don't get that sort of structure and that sizzle,

that browning, that flavour.

It's got that real kind of makes your mouth water... Yeah, very much.

..ooh, I'm about to eat something

good today type feel.

According to Josh, combining his pork fat with plant protein

will be enough to get meat eaters excited.

So in these meaty layers here,

what we have is plant proteins

that we combine with our fat.

Can I have a taste?

You can't have a taste just yet.

We're really close, but we're just waiting for the green light

from regulators to be able to give you this.

Because this is just a new ingredient.

When you say "just yet", you mean because it's not cooked yet or...?

No, just because it's not an ingredient yet

that we're allowed to give to people.

Oh, my word.

You've teased me all this time with your cooking talk! I know.

That's what we like to do here. And now I can't even try it.

I know.

HE CHUCKLES

The product is so new, it needs government approval

before it's allowed anywhere near my mouth.

So I can't put Josh's theory to the taste test,

but I can see the science.

Mathilde Thoulouze is the lead bioprocess engineer

behind the project.

Hello, Mathilde. Hello! Nice to meet you.

Welcome - grab a lab coat.

The process starts with a few stem cells harvested from a pig.

Cells are the basic building blocks of life, and these stem cells

can go on to develop into all kinds of cells,

from bone to muscle.

Can we see any? Yes, let's get them from the incubator.

Yes, please.

Once they have their stem cells,

they can grow and multiply as many as they like

in a bioreactor.

No more animals or samples required.

What kind of conditions do the cells need to be in, then, to grow?

Like in the body, they like to be at a certain temperature,

a certain acidity.

And they also really need

specific foods in the same way

you do in your body, with proteins,

vitamins and things like this.

Some of the stem cells can then be taken to the next miraculous step.

The scientists need to persuade them

to transform into fat.

How do you turn them into fat cells?

One of the main ways of triggering that is by changing the food

we give them so that they turn into fat cells,

and then they become fattier and fattier through the week.

Can we have a look at some? Yes.

So, here you can see the fat droplets, smaller and bigger ones.

So the smaller one would be at the beginning of the process

and the larger one would be when the process is completed.

You can see the fat droplets

right in front of your eyes.

That is very satisfying to see them developed at the end.

Oh, it's great because in a good experiment, you will see your cells

getting fattier every day and you can see the lipid droplets

getting bigger and bigger.

The next step is harvest,

so we need to recover the cells

and separate them from their environment.

Once you've harvested the cells, what happens next?

Well, we get product.

Oh, wow.

So this is animal fat? Yes.

This is pork fat. Oh, my word.

That is incredible. I mean, it looks just like lard.

It is, it is real pork fat.

It might not satisfy vegans.

Biologically, this really is pork fat.

But the founders of this company claim it could be a game-changer

when it comes to carbon emissions.

In terms of timeline, then, guys, what's next?

When am I going to see these products on the supermarket shelves?

So we're a couple of years away, I think, from having products

on supermarket shelves in the UK.

And what about carbon emissions?

Because if the plan is to scale up,

surely a lot of energy

is going to be used to actually create the product?

We do need to use energy to create the product, but nowhere near

the amount of energy that you need for traditional

intensive animal agriculture.

That's the biggest reason why we started Hoxton Farms,

to change the way that people eat in a way that's much better

for the environment.

Products containing our cultivated fat as an ingredient

will have carbon emissions of something around 90% to 95% less

than traditional meat does.

These are bold claims, and while this company has had

tens of millions of pounds in investments,

that's small beer up against the £11 billion

meat production industry.

It's clearly fairly early days for this company,

but if technologies allow us to get the animal food

without the animal farming, well, it does feel like a net zero

future will involve companies like this one.

JUSTIN: Campaigners and even government committees

have recommended we cut our meat intake for environmental reasons.

So should we reduce the number of meaty ready meals we eat?

The National Farmers' Union doesn't think so.

The Climate Change Committee recommends meat and dairy consumption

decline by 20% by 2030,

and 35% by 2050.

Does the NFU, the National Union of Farmers, accept those figures?

Look, we don't accept those figures because we know that when we

look at our red meat production,

we believe we're in the top 50%

of global producers with the least carbon footprint for our red meat.

Our dairy production is world leading.

You say UK beef and lamb has a relatively low carbon footprint

compared to that produced abroad,

but it's still way higher than plant-based foods, isn't it?

I mean, wouldn't it make more sense just to switch to the much lower

carbon plant-based foods?

When we look at our livestock numbers over the past 50 years,

our cattle numbers are down about 30% or a third.

Our sheep numbers are down since the early '90s.

We're already massively reducing our livestock numbers.

But the carbon emissions per unit of meat are still

far higher than plant-based foods.

Like I say, I think this is really personal choice.

It's down to the individual to decide what they want to consume.

The NFU still claims farming can get to net zero,

but it says that ambition will only become a reality

if imports are produced to the same net zero standards

as food here in the UK.

It's highly likely that if we adopt all of the technologies

that are going to try and get us towards net zero,

then that's going to have a real cost burden associated with it.

If we're then undermined by imports that don't have those same standards

and those same costs, we're just going to be undermined

in the marketplace.

Say you get the restrictions on imports that you want,

that will mean higher food prices, won't it?

Because the cheap food we're importing from abroad

won't be available.

We'll be relying more on British agriculture, which I'm sure

is something you'd want and you'd celebrate,

and may indeed reduce emissions

but it is likely to drive up prices, isn't it?

We're not looking for protection, but the NFU has always...

That does sound like protection.

No, no. The NFU has always stood for fair trade.

Now, fair trade is very, very different to free trade.

But listen, import restrictions will mean

higher food prices in the UK.

Realistically, are government's going to want to do that?

Ultimately, this is Government's decision

about whether they're serious about delivering

the climate change ambition.

We know that without a fair import policy, we are going to offshore

our production to jurisdictions we have absolutely no control over.

Close to half the food on our plates is imported.

If net zero rules push up prices here in the UK,

then we could be tempted to import cheaper food from abroad

that has higher emissions.

At the moment, it's up to the supermarkets and other businesses

to ensure that imported food matches their promises about net zero.

So what are supermarkets doing about imports?

About 80% of that is from Europe.

So Europe is facing into net zero

in exactly the same way as the UK

in terms of both its support for its farmers,

its food producers, its food manufacturers.

So I think from that side, we're pretty confident.

The further abroad tends to be, you know, often non-seasonal stuff

that we can't grow here

or maybe more exotic fruits and things like that.

We will work with those supply chains

to make a difference in there as well.

I mean, when you sit back and you look at the industry,

as you do, the British Retail Consortium,

how big a challenge for the industry is this?

Huge - this is a huge challenge.

I mean, taking responsibility for the way our food is produced

and then sold, that is a massive responsibility.

And I don't think anybody is looking at this lightly.

This will require huge change,

structural change in farming,

in processing, and then into the retail and, to a certain extent,

maybe us as consumers as well in terms of our diet

and what we're buying as well.

So what about us? What about consumers?

What can we do to help?

Well, household emissions from things like fridges, freezers

and cooking adds up to about 10% of emissions.

But there's one thing that should be fairly easy

to change - waste.

We've seen the scale of emissions our food produces,

but a huge amount of that edible food ends up in the bin.

The emissions from that waste adds up

to almost a fifth of the total.

We all throw food away.

Now, some of that waste is inevitable.

Bones, eggshells, banana skins, stuff we can't eat,

but some of the food we throw away could have been eaten.

Now, maybe, we bought too much or maybe, oh, dear...

Maybe it's past its use-by date.

But whether it's avoidable food waste or not,

the food we throw away

is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.

There's only one way to understand our rubbish

and that's to get your hands dirty on a bin lorry.

Literally just there. Literally just pop it in.

Pop it in. However you can.

Why am I making it look so difficult?

There we go. Perfect.

So you make it look easy. I'm not as smooth as you.

I know, yeah. You get used to it. You get used to it.

It's all fun and games until you catch a whiff.

Yes.

UK households throw away over 6 million tons

of food every year.

Oh! A bad one, was it?

That was...

Urgh! ..juicy. All right, here we go.

Ooh!

It's estimated we throw away

£17 billion worth of food each year

that could have been eaten.

Does it make you think about your own habits

and, like, what you put in your food waste?

Yeah, yeah. You look at some houses

and think, "Oh, there's so much food waste, you know."

So you think maybe I should cut down myself, you know.

Because it's something that we all do, but you're actually dealing

with the end of it, aren't you?

Yeah, I see the back end of it.

For most of us, it's in the bin, gone, and forgotten.

Ah, Teresa's doing two at once, making up for it.

I'm going to give some help.

In terms of the things that you see in here... Mm.

..what's the weirdest thing that you've got?

It was last year.

I remember last summer I catch one of these bins,

maybe with 12 pigeons, all dead.

I was not expecting that answer. Yeah, yeah.

Apart from that,

usually it's the packages.

People throw away the food

inside of the packages.

Are there times of year that you don't look forward

to doing this job, in terms of what you'll find in those bins?

The summertime - with all of the maggots.

Oh!

All that food we throw away has already produced

thousands of tons of CO2,

methane, and nitrous oxide before it gets to us.

So, sure, reducing food waste would save us money,

but it would also help slow climate change.

And emissions are also caused

by food waste itself when it goes

to landfill from how it decomposes.

But, instead of heading to landfill,

there is another option.

Here we go.

Oh. Thanks, guys.

No problem.

Do you know what? It's every child's dream to do a bin round.

You can come back whenever you want.

We like the extra help.

I bet you do. Definitely.

So where do you take this stuff when you're done?

Goes to an AD centre, you know.

An AD centre?

Compared to landfill,

an anaerobic digestion centre -

AD for short - is one way to reduce emissions.

And this one in Staffordshire is one of the largest plants

of its kind in Europe.

This is the reception hall, where all the trucks come in

to deliver the food waste.

It's a bit different to the reception halls

I've been in before.

We don't do much dancing in this one.

And how much am I looking at right now?

At the moment, with the bunkers full, towards the end of the day,

there's about 100 ton there.

100 ton!

And there's four of those bunkers today.

One bunker is roughly 20,000 weekly households.

It's 2,000 tons coming in a week.

Normally, you see waste and the bin juice

and you're like, "Urgh" but like,

I don't know, it's more sobering.

It's too...too important to be disgusted by

because it's, like, actually, this is here. It's a thing.

It's all of our things.

What we're looking at there is a resource

and we've got to capture that resource now.

This site was built to take

this grotesque pile

of unwanted food and turn it into something we do want - energy.

Welcome to the control room.

Hello.

This does not look simple.

This looks like there's so many different moving parts.

At the scale of this plant, which is one of the biggest in Europe,

it's very complex.

It costs us about £30 million

when we first built it in 2011.

Large, complex industrial machinery

takes the food waste, crushes it,

removes contaminants and creates a soup unlike any other.

Would you like to see some?

I'd love to see some.

This is a sample from today.

Stand back for a second.

Ooh!

I can't smell it yet.

Really? Am I...?

Oh, no, I can smell it now!

You can put the lid back on that. OK.

This revolting soup is now ready to be turned into electricity.

So the soup we've made in the building transfers over to the tank.

Bugs in there eat the soup

and create the biogas off the top of the tanks.

The gas goes into the engines,

and the V20 cylinders are turning

an alternator and making electricity for about 15,000 homes.

I get it.

Ready meals produce emissions at every stage,

from farm, to factory, to food bin.

Achieving net zero in just 25 years is a massive challenge.

We've seen all the effort going into cutting emissions

in the food chain, but we are also relying on technology

that is still in its infancy

and could push up prices.

All of which means there's no guarantee

our food will get to net zero by 2050.

But there is one thing we could do right now

if we only bought the food

we needed and didn't throw so much away, we could reduce food emissions

by 18 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.

Now that is roughly the same as doubling the amount

of woodland and forest in the UK.