This opinion piece in Responsible Investor, by Rachel Crossley and Katie Gordon (both advisors to the Access to Nutrition Initiative), argues that nutrition is becoming an increasingly important issue for investors. The authors point to the economic impacts of malnutrition, growing consumer demand for healthy foods, and regulation by governments such as sugar taxes and marketing restrictions.

In this report, international non-profit Forum for the Future calls for “a just transition to a regenerative agriculture system” in the United States. The report, funded by the Walmart Foundation, identifies opportunities and barriers to scaling regenerative agriculture in the US.

US retailer Walmart, the world’s largest company by revenue, has announced a goal to become a “regenerative company”. Specific targets include protecting, managing or restoring at least 50 million acres of land (which is equivalent to around 2% of the United States’ land area) and one million square miles of ocean (<1% of the global ocean area) by 2030, and achieving net zero emissions by 2040. The net zero target appears to cover only Walmart’s direct emissions, not food and product supply chain emissions.

This paper, co-authored by FCRN member Simon Bager, assesses the sustainability practices of a sample of hundreds of companies in the global coffee sector, including producers, traders, roasters, processors and cafés. It reports that around one third of the companies have no sustainability commitments, another third have one to four commitments and the remaining third have five or more sustainability commitments.

In this report, UK non-profit Forum for the Future argues that chefs have an important role to play in providing healthy and sustainable diets. The report sets out a vision of future chef training that focuses less on meat and dairy and more on “ethical, seasonal and sustainably sourced ingredients”.

According to this report by UK NGO Eating Better, the proportion of UK supermarket ready meals that is plant-based has increased significantly, from 3% in 2018 to 16% in March 2020, with another 9% being vegetarian but not wholly plant-based. Morrisons, Asda and Aldi doubled the size of their meat free range in the last two years. 

This article argues that “super low carbon cows” (cows that emit lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions than conventional cows with the help of breeding, technology or livestock management practices) can be thought of as a form of geoengineering. The author argues that the promise of “super low carbon cows” is being used by some corporations to position business as part of the solution to climate change, while neglecting to address factors such as lifestyle and market structures.

UK NGO the Food Foundation has published its Plating up Progress 2020 analysis of the progress being made by major UK-operating businesses within the food retail, foodservice and restaurant chain sectors across key themes relating to the transition to a healthy and sustainable food system.

This report from the US nonprofit Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiative Integrity looks at 40 multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) - voluntary standards set by civil society organisations and industry, such as Fairtrade International, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Marine Stewardship Council - and concludes that MSIs are not effective at holding corporations accountable for abuses or protecting human rights.