This report by Compassion in World Farming highlights the so-called “negative externalities” associated with livestock-based food production – that is, costs to human health and the environment that are borne by society as a whole and which are not accounted for by the cost of producing the food or the price of consuming it.

In this paper, researchers from the Universities of Southampton and Reading compare how effective three different wildlife-friendly farming strategies are at supporting habitat diversity and species richness.

In the years since publication of the first edition of “Food Wars” much has happened in the world of food policy. This new edition brings these developments fully up to date within the original analytical framework of competing paradigms or worldviews shaping the direction and decision-making within food politics and policy.

In this blog-post Ademola Braimoh, Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist, at the World Bank, argues that quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is a necessary step for climate-smart agriculture (CSA). He writes that greenhouse gas accounting can provide the numbers and data that are important for solid decision making.

Some scientists have suggested that Africa's wet savannahs could be ideal for growing crops needed to meet the growing demand for food and bioenergy. In this paper however, researchers from Princeton University and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) warn that farmland conversion of these savannahs will come at a much higher cost than previously thought.

An online overview of agroecology research is currently being conducted in the UK by the Ecological Land Cooperative. A mixed professional and volunteer research team was commissioned to: 1) review research on ecological agriculture in the United Kingdom; and 2) provide a database of existing research. The overview is freely accessible and it was developed to inform both on-going research work and those working in the field of agroecology.

The booklet The susDISH analysis method – Sustainability in the catering industry, taking account of both nutritional and environmental aspects in recipe planning is published by the Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences of the Halle-Wittenberg University.

This report builds on the dialogue built during a workshop held by RISE in 2014 regarding the measurement of farming environmental performance so as to further refine the definitions of sustainable intensification and the subsequent implications that such definitions pose on policy making to progress it. In doing so, the report explores three different case studies: The first case study focuses on soil performance and resilience. It shows how achieving sustainable intensification is highly dependent on having sound measurement of the underlying conditions.

This study, entitled "Gains to species diversity in organically farmed fields are not propagated at the farm level, investigates whether organic farming contributes to biodiversity at the farm level."