The People's Food Policy project has created a blueprint for action to change the food system in England. Their explicit aim was ‘to map out what an integrated food policy would look like if people were put at the heart of decision-making.’

This report provides an overarching framework document on Sustainable Food Systems which outlines the areas of sustainability that are relevant for IFST and where they want to engage. The report is written by IFST (Institute of Food Science and Technology) – an institute representing some of the UK’s food science and technology professionals and working to promote the advancement and application of food science and technology.

This policy brief, produced by the PBL – the Netherlands environmental assessment agency, investigates the integrated approach that would be needed to making the food chain more circular. In a circular food chain, raw materials are used in a way that adds the most value to the economy and causes the least harm to the environment.

A newly revised edition of Tim Jackson’s important 2009 Prosperity without Growth has been published by Routledge. In it, Jackson aims to demonstrate that building a ‘post-growth’ economy is a precise, definable and meaningful task.

This new book by Maurie J. Cohen examines how the system of mass consumption is changing; discusses popular trends such as the sharing economy, the Maker Movement, and economic localization; and describes the role that worker-consumer cooperatives could play in actively changing the current paradigm. 

This report by Agile-ox, a project based at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, 'Sharing the co-benefits of local action on climate change' aims to promote discussion and provide practical ideas, case studies and a checklist about how local action can help contribute to a fair and fast transition to a low carbon economy in a way that benefits residents, reduces social divides and builds broad public support for action.

This report by the African Centre for Biodiversity argues that the Farm Input Subsidy Programmes (FISPs) have not achieved their intended goals in a number of African countries where they have been implemented. In its highly critical analysis the report argues that they consume large parts of agricultural and even national budgets and are largely ineffective social transfer schemes that create dependency.

Permaculture is described here as a grassroots movement whose participants attempt to live in a sustainable way, taking inspiration from natural ecosystems in trying to live off the land as much as possible. The idea behind permaculture is to rely as much as possible on perennial crops, to recycle and reuse materials, and reduce waste. 

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.