The Food Innovators: 2025

October 17, 2025·42 min·3 clips

Scallops queue to enter illuminated lobster pots, dubbed 'disco scallops', in a groundbreaking sustainable fishing discovery.

A basket lights the seabed. The programme starts by asking listeners to imagine a busy, desirable room, then reveals the room is a converted lobster pot underwater. Scallops are lining up for the glow. Dr Robert Enever explains how a bulb inside the pot spreads light across the ocean floor and attracts scallops in a way no one had spotted before. It sounds almost silly, until the episode turns to the south coast and the fishing problem underneath it. Octopus numbers are rising there. The octopus is described as a predator linked to falling lobster catches, with the situation called apocalyptic. Suddenly the glowing basket feels less like a joke and more like a possible way through. For fishermen testing the method, catches of 20, 40, 50 or 100 scallops cannot just be dropped into the usual market and forgotten. The price has to work. Enever says the idea needs a premium label and buyers who care, or fishermen will not have much reason to keep experimenting. Chef Mitch Tonks brings the story ashore. He opens a scallop and shows the translucent meat, moving the invention from lab talk to dinner plate. Through 11 Rockfish restaurants, he can give small and artisanal boats a route to customers. Then the episode pulls wider. A visit with Food Forest pioneer Martin Crawford shifts from shellfish to farming systems built to cope with drought. His argument is plain enough: trees can sometimes help supply water, and mixed crops make total failure less likely. One basket will not save everything. The three stories are BBC Food and Farming Awards finalists, with the winner held for a later special edition.

As heard by us

Illuminated pots give scallop fishing a vivid twist, while a food forest argues for resilience through diversity.

The Food Innovators: 2025 treats food innovation as something practical, local and slightly precarious. Its strongest image is Dr. Robert Enever's illuminated lobster pots, which lure scallops into converted gear and turn a technical trial into the vivid idea of "disco…

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Why you'd press play

You get disco scallops in lit-up pots, then a food forest case for farming through drought.

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