A recent paper argues that the global food system needs to become both more sustainable and more resilient to environmental and economic shocks. Defining resilience as “the resistance or rapid recovery of system interrelationships and functions after perturbation”, the paper points to existing examples of “undesirable” resilience, which inhibit the transformation of the food system to a more sustainable state.

The UK’s Local Government Association (LGA) has called for industry to stop creating non-recyclable food packaging, saying that “Councils have done all they can,” to tackle the issue of plastic recycling. The LGA has found that only one-third of plastic packaging used by households can be recycled.

This book, by Raquel Ajates Gonzalez, uses a multidisciplinary approach to study the contribution of farmers’ cooperatives in the European Union towards sustainable food systems.

This paper, by FCRN member Hannah van Zanten (and whose authors include FCRN director Tara Garnett), calculates that a food system where livestock are fed only on food waste and industrial and agricultural by-products could provide 9 to 23 g of animal protein to the daily human diet (compared to daily protein needs of 50 to 60 g per person) while using one quarter less land than a food system with no livestock. The paper notes that the waste-fed livestock system could allow people in Asia and Africa to increase their consumption of animal protein, but that current consumption levels in other areas are higher than would be possible under a waste-fed livestock system.

Scientists have unintentionally created a variant of a bacterial enzyme that is 20% better than the original at breaking down polyethylene terephthalate, commonly used to make plastic bottles. The researchers were investigating the properties of a bacterium that has naturally evolved to digest plastic.

This book, edited by Jérémie Forney, Chris Rosin and Hugh Campbell, examines the roles, motivations and interactions of the many different players in the governance of agri-food systems.

A report by the social enterprise Circle Economy finds that today’s economy is only 9.1% circular, based on their newly launched Global Circularity Metric. To move away from the current linear economic model, the report recommends extracting fewer resources, wasting less, optimising the resources we already have and cycling more resources back into the economy.

This new book, edited by Michel. P. Pimbert, Director at the Center for Agroecology, Water and Resilience in the U.K., critically examines the kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing needed for food sovereignty, agroecology and biocultural diversity.

This book by Nick Silver provides an in-depth critique of the current financial system.