Aimed at industry professionals, this book offers a practical guide to analyse and design sustainable business practice in the food industry. The book demystifies a range of topics in the food system through using real life business cases. 

This work uses the avocado as a lens to analyse the impact of globalising the production of local food. Eldridge explores the economic, environmental and ethical problems raised by the transition that has occurred to meet global demand for avocados.  

Russia has pulled out of the Black Seas Grain Initiative, risking the loss of millions of tonnes of food from the global market. The landmark deal made last summer provided assurance that ships entering and leaving ports in Ukraine would not be attacked. This allowed 32.9 mn tonnes of food to be exported to food insecure regions in Africa, the Middle East and Asia since August. The Kremlin announced on Monday that Russia would suspend the initiative until its demand to get its own agricultural shipments to the world are met, despite the fact that Russia has been exporting record quantities of wheat and fertilisers.

The authors of this article present a multi-layer network model that analyses the propagation of shocks in the global food trade system. The authors recognise that shocks, such as extreme weather events and political or geopolitical crises, have become more frequent over time. They therefore propose a model that simulates the complex interactions between countries, production processes, trade networks, and product allocation to study the impact of production shocks on food availability in different countries or regions.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive global assessment of where food and agricultural production conflicts with biodiversity conservation, and the products and countries that contribute the most to these trends. Spatial models of farming and conservation priority areas were used to estimate how the production and consumption of 48 agricultural commodities across 197 countries conflict with the conservation of 7,143 species.

This report from IPES-Food finds that 60% of low-income countries and 30% of middle-income countries are in or are at risk of debt distress, with 21 countries facing both debt distress and food insecurity. The report identifies four ways in which food systems are contributing to pressure on public finances: dependencies on imports and the dollar; extractive financial flows; boom-bust commodity cycles; and climate change. It calls for policymakers to provide debt relief as well as support for food system reform.

This article by The Good Food Institute explores global trends in investment in alternative proteins during 2022. Alternative protein companies raised $2.9 billion globally in 2022 - a 42% decrease compared to 2021, which followed several years of increasing global investment in alternative proteins. The article attributes 2022’s lower investment to broader market conditions, as economy-wide private venture funding also declined 35% in 2022. The article also sets out the results of an investor survey showing that 99% of respondents remain optimistic about the alternative protein sector in the long term.

NGO Feedback has published a website, Big Livestock's Big Greenwash, outlining the marketing strategies used by large livestock companies, including: reporting emissions and climate targets in ways that appear to show more progress than has happened; focusing on technological options (e.g. feed additives) to increase efficiency without reducing meat and dairy production; downplaying the climate impact of livestock; and building narratives that argue livestock production is good for farmer wellbeing, food security and traditional meat-based diets. Feedback argues that these strategies amount to greenwash.

This briefing note by think tank ECDPM sets out a five-step methodology, developed by ECDPM and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), for stimulating investments in sustainable food systems by strengthening collaboration between public and private actors. It also outlines lessons learned from the application of the methodology in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya and Niger.