This paper argues that the COVID-19 pandemic requires a policy response that significantly reforms the structure of the food system. It examines how policy responses to past food crises have shaped the present system, how COVID-19 is different to past food crises and which policy responses could build a more resilient future food system.

In collaboration with WWF, the UK supermarket Tesco has announced a target of increasing sales of plant-based meat alternatives by 300% by 2025, relative to a 2018 baseline. To meet this goal, Tesco plans to introduce new plant-based products, try to keep prices affordable, work with suppliers to encourage innovation and display meat replacements alongside their animal-based equivalent.

The UK’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission has launched a new website called Trade Unwrapped, which aims to host conversations about “decisions being made about the UK’s new trading relationships and the impact they’ll have on our everyday lives.”

In this blog post on the Oxford Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) website, FCRN member James Painter summarises his recent research on media coverage of animal agriculture and its links to climate change, and lab-grown (or cultured) meat as an alternative to meat eating. The research shows that media coverage of animal agriculture tends to focus on consumer responsibility as opposed to the role of governments or large farms.

This book (publication date 30 October 2020), presents interdisciplinary insights on the controlled release of fertilisers, including chapters from researchers in the fields of agriculture, polymer science, and nanotechnology.

This book (publication date 23 October 2020), takes an interdisciplinary look at groundwater management and sustainability. It covers some food-relevant topics, including the sustainability of groundwater used in agricultural production and trade and the political economy of groundwater irrigation in India.

In this report, international non-profit Forum for the Future calls for “a just transition to a regenerative agriculture system” in the United States. The report, funded by the Walmart Foundation, identifies opportunities and barriers to scaling regenerative agriculture in the US.

This report from the non-profit Good Food Institute reviews the current status of fermentation technologies in the alternative protein industry. It covers traditional fermentation (e.g. tempeh, cheese, yoghurt), biomass fermentation (where microbial biomass is used as an ingredient, e.g. the filamentous fungi in Quorn) and precision fermentation (where a specific component is extracted from the biomass, e.g. Perfect Day’s dairy proteins and Impossible Foods’ heme protein).

This report from the EAT Forum examines current food consumption patterns and finds that most national dietary guidelines do not integrate both health and environmental sustainability. It finds that halving food-related greenhouse gas emissions in G20 countries by 2050 would contribute towards equitably feeding 10 billion people within planetary boundaries.