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The glaring green skills gap in the food industry

The glaring green skills gap in the food industry

So, does the industry have the sustainability skills it needs? And if not, what’s missing? If food and drink is lacking skills, it’s far from the only industry in that position. Demand for green skills outstrips supply across the whole of the UK.

According to Linkedin data, just one in eight British workers possess skills in key areas such as climate action planning or sustainable product development, while almost a third of jobs advertised in the UK last year required at least one green skill. 

However, the public-facing nature of consumer goods arguably leaves the sector among the most exposed when it comes to mishaps.

It’s why Kate Cawley set up Future Food Movement in 2021, a membership community specifically designed to address the skills gap and upskill food and drink teams.

“Over the past few years, the sector has developed a fear of greenwashing or getting it wrong.

It isn’t that the majority of people we engage with didn’t want to understand or do the right thing, but they didn’t know how to go about it if they weren’t in the sustainability team. And the more senior a role gets, the bigger that skills and confidence gap becomes.

This dynamic is fuelled by the way sustainability teams tend to operate in silo in many organisations, she believes, rather than being integrated into each func- tion. Plus, “there’s a lack of time and focus that people are giving this, particularly when there are competing priorities at a boardroom level”.

Read the full article online here and in the print edition of The Grocer.

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