The last decade has witnessed major crises in both food and energy security across the world. One response to the challenges of climate change and energy supply has been the development of crops to be used for biofuels. But, as this book shows, this can divert agricultural land from food production to energy crops, thus affecting food security, particularly in less developed countries.

This report entitled 'Mitigating risks and vulnerabilities in the energy-food-water nexus in developing countries' analyses global nexus interconnections (such as the dependence of food systems on energy at every stage of the food value chain) and identifies key challenges for food, energy and water security, which include economic and population growth, resource depletion, environmental degradation, climate change and globalisation.

Through the integration of gender analysis into resilience thinking, this book shares field-based research insights from a collaborative, integrated project aimed at improving food security in subsistence and smallholder agricultural systems.

Poor households in developing countries are sometimes included in livestock programmes by humanitarian organisations whereby they are given a cow, a pair of oxen, or a herd of goats. This paper analyses the impacts on the food security of recipients in these kinds of programmes and finds that the effect is positive. 

In this commentary, Thomas Hertel of Purdue University argues that typically-used metrics of food security that are based solely on food production and food prices are incomplete, misleading or in some cases, just wrong.

In this paper, researchers from James Cook University, Australia, assess the impact on the environment and agriculture of 33 planned or existing “development corridors” in sub-Saharan Africa. Development corridors are tracts of land earmarked for large-scale infrastructure expansions (e.g. road access) with the aim of increasing agricultural production.

This publication summarises the work of the FAO with the agricultural community to tackle climate change and its effects. The report begins by summarising four key underpinning principles of their work with food production systems:

The Food Foundation, a UK think tank that presents policy solutions to the public health challenges produced by the food system, has published its initial response to the Government’s spending review – which sets out departmental spending priorities over the next five years. The response focusses on the Review’s implications for food insecurity and public health spending.