Transforming the food system has become a mainstream conversation, but food systems interventions are diverse and generated by varied perspectives on the meaning of equitability and justice. For some, greater equity is gained through increased production or monetary support through aid, for others it requires redistribution of wealth and power or even the complete socio-economic transformation of society. This paper outlines four discourses of food system change; productionism, redistributionism, anti-capitalism and AID: donor rescue and compares the implications of these discourses for food system outcomes.

This paper assesses four recent influential publications on food - the EAT Lancet Commission, the World Resources Report, Growing Better from the Food and Land Use Coalition and the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. It argues that they do not give enough attention to the livelihoods of food producers, particularly poorer rural people. The authors note that only a limited subset of smallholder producers are likely to be able to escape poverty through growth in their agricultural productivity.

This open-access book reflects on how seeds are governed, seeking to move beyond simple descriptions of competing seed system types as traditional or modern, subsistence or commercial, or local or global. It focuses on case studies from Japan.

This paper outlines the systemic risks of using artificial intelligence (AI), specifically machine learning (ML) models, in agriculture and proposes ways of mitigating those risks. The three categories of risk considered are: risks related to data; risks related to the narrow optimisation of ML models; and risks linked to deploying ML models at scale.

The UK-based Food Research Collaboration has put together a map of food research institutes in the UK that study food systems and food policy. It is aimed at academics seeking fellow subject specialists and at civil society and journalists seeking experts on food systems topics. 

The Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (ANH) Academy curates a database of teaching resources on interdisciplinary agriculture, nutrition and health topics, including journals, online courses, lecture slides, games, infographics and other recommended reading.

Tim Lang of the Centre for Food Policy reflects on the UN Food Systems Summit, which took place on 23 September 2021, in this blog post published by the Food Research Collaboration. Lang suggests that the most significant outcome of the Summit might be an “omni-framework” approach, i.e. assessing and measuring food systems on multiple fronts including diets, environment and climate, livelihoods, resilience, governance and so on. 

The UN Food Systems Summit has published a synthesis of hundreds of independent dialogues that are taking place in advance of the Summit. The report identifies ten themes that emerged from the dialogues.

This report from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food sets out a framework (and a worked example of using the framework) to guide the actions of individuals and organisations working on systems transformation. The framework is built around the seven principles of the Global Alliance, which are: renewability, resilience, health, equity, diversity, inclusion, and interconnectedness.