As much as 75 percent of global seed diversity in staple food crops is held and actively used by a wide range of small farmholders - workers of less than three to seven acres - with the rest in gene banks.

The European Commission was due to publish a Communication on Sustainable Food in 2013 to “assess how best to limit waste throughout the food supply chain, and consider ways to lower the environmental impact of food production and consumption patterns”.  This long-awaited Communication has still not been published.

This paper in the journal Food Security analyses the genetically modified (GM) seed industry. The paper states that since many scientists, policymakers and citizens are calling for sustainable intensification of global agriculture (providing high yields and incomes without adverse environmental impacts) it is crucial to discuss the important role of the seed sector in such plans. The paper “Taking Stock of the Genetically Modified Seed Sector Worldwide: Market, Stakeholders, and Prices” assembles comprehensive data on the contemporary GM seed industry and its importance within the seed sector as a whole.

The authors behind this study say that climate change has substantially increased the prospect that crop production will fail to keep up with rising demand in the next 20 years.

This book uses a decade of primary research to examine how weather and climate, as measured by variations in the growing season using satellite remote sensing, has affected agricultural production, food prices and access to food in food-insecure regions of the world.

An international panel of scientists is calling for an evidence-driven debate over whether a widely used type of insecticide is to blame for declines in bees and other insect pollinators.