Food and the Environment
In Scotland, we have year-round access to nutritious, affordable food, produced both at home and imported from around the world. Most of us can name foods that are part of a healthy diet, but which of those foods are also good for environmental health locally and globally?
Featured Resources
Eco-Schools Curricular Map - Food and the Environment Topic
Our revised curricular maps showing Experiences and Outcomes related to the Food and the Environment Topic.
Food and the Environment – Thinking About Food
This overview is designed to get pupils thinking differently about the food they eat. Arranged in four sections on: what food is available, how is food grown or harvested, food wastes and, food culture, you can explore the sections and begin to discover how our food choices make a difference.
Download the Food and the Environment exercise for your class
One Planet Picnic
A picnic that is good for the planet and good for you! It is an informal way to think about food and sustainability and an opportunity to celebrate local harvests, try new foods and reduce food waste.
Pocket Garden
One Planet Picnic Pocket Garden is a competition that provides a great opportunity for pupils aged 3-18 to investigate our plant and food heritage, celebrate culture and develop creative design skills. A Pocket Garden is a pallet sized design including plants that can be eaten, that attract biodiversity and which reuse something which would otherwise have been thrown away.
Have a look at Our Pocket Garden Stories for inspiration and create your design
Nourish - Food Atlas
This Scottish Food Atlas is not what you might expect. It draws together different issues around our food, using stats, graphs, and maps to communicate the evidence. It provides a visual indication of the current state of affairs, shares a vision for a more equal and sustainable future, and suggests how we might get from here to there.
Food and Climate Change
Global consumption of food, water and energy are rising and it is predicted that food production will have to increase by 70% by 2050 to feed the world’s population. Producing sufficient food is not the whole story though. We need to produce food in a sustainable way that reduces dependence on finite resources and does not degrade the environment or reduce its productive capacity. This includes reducing the contribution of food production to climate change while already having to adapt production to the effects of climate change on food production here in Scotland and around the world.
Compass
Compass is a planning tool to support schools in their journey towards sustainability when developing their learning and teaching about food. It offers ideas and examples of action for sustainable development and blends areas of focus with features of learning. Compass allows users to create and download a personalised information pack.
Low Carbon Skills
These film resources have been made by pupils in schools across Scotland. Through making these resources, the young people involved have developed key skills and knowledge that will help them in life and work, why it’s so important to know where products come from and why businesses are encouraged to operate more sustainably to lower their carbon footprint. These films will perhaps encourage your pupils to take action and make better consumer and life-style choices.
Watch Low Carbon Skills films and download teaching resources
Climate Challenge Fund - Food
The Climate Challenge Fund supports projects involving food. These projects aim to reduce carbon emissions associated with food by encouraging the growing and consumption of local food. CCF projects also work to reduce food waste in their communities as well as encouraging composting of unavoidable food waste.
Have a look at some examples or find a funded group in your community.*
Food and Equality Resources
Growing Resources
Garden For Life Resources
The Garden for Life Forum is a partnership of Scottish environmental organisations working together to increase enjoyment and understanding of wildlife in gardens. The forum has produced seven guides on gardening to get you started including one on food.
RHET - Scotland's Farming Year
Scotland's Farming Year is an educational video series which gives children an insight into many aspects of Scottish agriculture and helps them to understand where their food comes from. Topics include sheep and lambing, pigs, eggs, ploughing and harvest.
RHET - Educational Posters on Farming
RHET offer a number of educational posters covering a wide range of subjects relating to food and farming. Check out the new Food & Farming Activities poster. How many activities can your class tick off?
Food Waste Resources
Don't Waste Our Future
A joint European Manifesto of Young People and Local Authorities to promote Food Waste Reduction and the global Right to Food. Jointly written by young people from across Europe including pupils from four Scottish secondary schools. Young people also produced food waste campaign materials which you can use in your own school.
Zero Waste Scotland - Food Waste Monitoring Toolkit for Schools
Toolkits for your catering team and for teachers and pupils. The catering team toolkit is for monitoring kitchen waste (preparation waste, spoilage and unserved meals). The teacher and pupil kit is for monitoring plate waste from the canteen.
World's Largest Lesson - Goal 1: Zero Hunger
World’s Largest Lesson introduces the Sustainable Development Goals to children and young people everywhere and unites them in action. Download lesson plans, comics and other resources on food to use in your classroom.
Eating Well Resources
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BBC Terrific Scientific - Taste Investigation
As part of the BBC science campaign Terrific Scientific, this Live Lesson will help your pupils to think and work like a scientist, with a focus on taste, nutrition, and the energy that food provides. The lesson is designed for 9-11 year olds and looks at the relationship between human taste and nutrition.
Take part in the BBC Terrific Scientific Taste Investigation
Food Standards Scotland - Eatwell Guide
Use the Eatwell Guide to help you get a balance of healthier and more sustainable food. It shows how much of what you eat overall should come from each food group. Fresh, whole foods can be good for you and good for the planet too.
Food and the Environment Case Studies
The Eco-Schools objectives in this area cover physical, emotional and cognitive aspects. Motivation for sustainable living is gained through practical action, emotional engagement, and improved understanding:
Hands – reconnect children and young people with raw foods and ingredients and their processes of production.
Heart – foster an appreciation of local distinctiveness and the intimate associations between place and food.
Head – develop awareness of the impacts on the environment of different methods of food production and processing.
Head : heart : hands – develop an awareness of the links between our food choices, the environment and people and places elsewhere.
Through work on the Food and the Environment Topic, pupils should:
- Understand the range of food choices available to us.
- Understand the resources and skills required for food production and processing.
- Recognise the value of healthy, stable ecosystems to food production.
- Understand the wider environmental implications of our food choices.
- Recognise the dimension of social responsibility in our food choices.
- Recognise our own food culture within a diversity of food cultures.
Stirling High School
Pupils at Stirling High School overcame vandalism to grow a variety of crops in their polytunnel and raised beds, built with help and funding from local businesses and community members. Read more.
