‘Veganuary’ has been the word that has dominated the resolutions of 2018.

With every new year, we begin with hopes of losing weight and hitting the gym, cutting the booze and eating better.

This year we have gone even further with hopes of protecting the environment and increasing animal welfare.

But is veganism just for January? I don’t think so. Eating habits are changing. This trend has been driven by the ‘millennials’, young people between the ages of 21 and 34.

There are plenty of studies on the eating habits of millennials all over the web but four particular changes seem the most interesting to me:

1) sustainable branding is a far higher priority for millennials than it was for their parents

2) millennials are willing to pay more for foods with health benefits

3) millennials are much more likely to post pictures of their food on social media platforms such as Instagram and

4) millennials, particularly of the urban variety, are much more likely to eat out than their parents.

What conclusions do I, as a farmer, draw from this?

Currently on the farm we grow wheat, barley and rape on an arable rotation; this is typical of many farms across the country whose crops mainly go towards making bread, beer, cereals and other starchy foods.

This is partly practical, so that we only need one type of combine harvester, but also it was perhaps reflective of a previous generation’s starchier diet. And yet in the world today there are almost 300,000 edible plant species, of which humans consume between 150 and 200. Around 75% of our diet comes from just 12 plant and five animal species.

Therefore the opportunities out there are vast, both for people to expand their range of consumption and for farmers to broaden their range of produce.

I recently went grocery shopping with my mother-in-law in Kingsbury, London which has a sizeable ethnic population. I was astonished that I could not recognise over half the variety of fresh produce on offer. Most of it, I am sure, was imported.

Clearly one reason for that is climate; but another is culture, which is something we can change. 2017 was a trail-blazing year in that the first commercial crop of UK-grown lentils went on sale in the autumn; this May on our farm, we are sewing our first ever crop of soya beans.