Next Bite 2025: Crafting Food System Resilience in 2025

This final episode of Next Bite 2025 brings together hard truths, grounded strategies, and clear demands from people working at the sharp edge of food system change. Host Matt Eastland guides a wide-ranging conversation that moves from local procurement to global nutrient security, from institutional trust to geopolitical risk.

Pete Russell (OOOOBY) lays out the case for decentralisation. He argues that real resilience comes from local density, not just data and dashboards. His point is simple: if one node fails, the others must be ready to step in — and that only works if small-scale producers are connected and supported.

Sara Ikonen (NP Harvest) raises the alarm about Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers. She explains how nutrient recovery from waste streams is no longer a niche solution — it’s a strategic necessity. Without phosphorus and nitrogen, there is no food.

Olivier Tomat (Genopole) calls for policy reform, not just more funding. He asks governments to stop saying no and start allowing space for experimentation — to let innovation prove itself before regulating it out of reach.

Student researchers explains how transparency and local sourcing build long-term trust in institutional food environments, like university cafeterias. And Krzysztof Klincewicz (University of Warsaw) points to retail chains as overlooked power brokers who are holding the keys to supply chain access, but too often left out of reform conversations.

Key Takeaways:

Centralised systems break harder and slower to recover.

Pete Russell explains how one farm shutting down shouldn’t collapse a local supply. Smaller networks, if connected properly, can cover each other. That’s built-in redundancy and resilience working together!

Europe is dangerously dependent on imported nutrients.

Sara Ikonen lays out the data: over 80% of EU countries rely on external phosphorus and nitrogen. Much of that comes from Russia and Morocco. Waste recovery isn’t a nice-to-have but a basic survival need.

Public trust depends on visibility.

Martin’s student-led project shows that people trust food more when they can see where it’s from. Local sourcing isn’t just sustainable. It builds belief in institutions and long-term behaviour change.

Retailers quietly enforce standards.

Krzysztof Klincewicz highlights how supermarkets already set terms that producers must follow. If retail chains back resilience, the rest of the system will follow.

Innovation needs space, not just grants.

Olivier Tomat says governments should create regulatory sandboxes — safe spaces for new solutions to prove themselves without being blocked too early by red tape.

Policy must reward circularity.

Sara stresses that the market doesn’t yet pay for nutrient recovery. Governments can change that with mandates or subsidies, creating incentives for adoption before the crisis deepens.

Scale matters, but not how you think.

Pete argues that mass production helps move calories, but decentralised networks are what build flexibility. We need bothm but the balance is currently skewed.

Waste streams are untapped resource hubs.

With the right systems, today’s environmental burdens become tomorrow’s input streams. Sara envisions a future where waste treatment generates value, not cost.