In this evidence review, co-written by FCRN member Ken Giller, the authors assess the extent to which agronomic fortification, the application of micronutrient fertiliser to crops, can improve the nutritional quality of diets in sub-Saharan Africa. They find that, while the technique has been shown to be effective in increasing the nutritional content and yield of crops, more research is required to establish the degree to which it can alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in humans.

This foresight report by the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition (Glopan) outlines a vision for a food system that reduces malnutrition and promotes health. It is designed to help policy-makers make their food systems more supportive of high quality diets.

The Oxfam campaign Behind the Brands has now been going for three years, its main goal being to change the way the food companies do business and eradicate hunger. The campaign targeted the top 10 global food and beverage companies and tried to get them to change on 7 important issues. 

This study, published in The Lancet, concludes that climate change will have a dampening effect on progress being made to reduce the number of people who are hungry and malnourished. It concludes that climate change will reduce the number of avoided deaths by 529,000 – or, put another way – will be responsible for 529,000 additional and avoidable deaths by 2050.

In the years since publication of the first edition of “Food Wars” much has happened in the world of food policy. This new edition brings these developments fully up to date within the original analytical framework of competing paradigms or worldviews shaping the direction and decision-making within food politics and policy.

In this article in The Conversation Tim Lang discusses two recent reports that have been published discussing food poverty and food banks in Britain.

The FAO argues in its latest version of the State of Food and Agriculture report SOFA that expanding social protection offers a faster track to ending hunger, when combined with broader agricultural and rural development measures. It argues that the vast majority of rural poor remain uncovered by social protection (only about a third of the world's poorest people are covered by any form of social protection).  Thus, expanding social protection programmes – including cash transfers, school feeding and public works - in rural areas and linking them to inclusive agricultural growth policies would rapidly reduce the number of poor people.

2015 marks the tenth year of the Global Hunger Index (GHI), which measures the state of hunger at the global, regional, and national level.  This report states that even though tremendous progress has been made towards eliminating global hunger, there is still a long way to go.

A new paper published in Environmental Science and Technology finds that measures to mitigate agricultural GHG emissions potentially risk increasing global hunger more than the impacts of climate change on crop yields itself.  The study draws upon global models to quantify:  a. the impact of climate change on yields in the absence of mitigation, b. the impact of bionergy production (as one mitigation measure) on competition for land and associated food prices and c. finally, the costs associated with mitigating the impacts of climate change by introducing a carbon tax.  Introduction of this tax is assumed to lead to increase in use of renewable fuels (wind, power, geothermal, bionenergy) and ‘abatement from non energy sources’ – which presumably includes agriculture although they do not specify what sort of abatement this would be.