This book gives an overview of how soils and terrestrial systems function and can best be managed. TABLE readers may be particularly interested in the book’s coverage of agricultural soils, pesticides, agriculture on soils affected by salt, organic farming, grazing systems, soil erosion, organic pest management, manure management, and agricultural runoff.

This paper attempts to quantify for the first time the planetary boundary for “novel entities” (NE-PB), including chemicals, new types of materials and modified forms of life. It focuses on chemical pollution, in particular plastics, and concludes that we fall outside a “safe operating space” for this planetary boundary.

This report from the Food Systems Handbook examines the impacts of crop pests and diseases on food security and farmer livelihoods, drawing on a roundtable of experts held in August 2021. It discusses the scale of the problems, the additional impacts that climate change is likely to have, and various interventions including genetic engineering, early warning systems, integrated pest management, post-harvest storage techniques, crop diversity, and legumes to enhance the soil biome.

International foundations, NGOs and government aid programmes are risking starvation in Africa by promoting “utopian visions of organic peasant agriculture”, according to this viewpoint piece by James Njoroge published by the Genetic Literacy Project. 

This paper finds that organic agriculture has the potential to increase yields in sub-Saharan Africa in some limited cases, but that in many cases, organic agriculture performs at similar levels to conventional agriculture (varied results, with some crops showing higher yields and some showing lower yields).

This book argues that glyphosate, the most commonly used weedkiller in the world, disrupts the gut microbiome and is linked to chronic diseases in humans as well as to soil degeneration and harm to wildlife.

This perspective article by Jennifer Clapp examines the effects of corporate consolidation in the global seed and agrochemical industry. Clapp argues that corporations in this sector with concentrated power can influence the wider food system in many ways, including by influencing markets, technology and governance. The global seed and agrochemical sector is dominated by just four firms - Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina-Syngenta and BASF - down from six in the early 2000s. 

This paper sets out a conceptual framework for a “pesticide treadmill”, in which pesticide use initiates a self-reinforcing vicious cycle, which can be escaped from in certain circumstances. It illustrates its arguments using case studies from Sudan and Nicaragua, and sets out similarities and differences between modern neonicotinoid usage patterns and historical examples of pesticide treadmills.

This paper, based on research with smallholder maize farms in South Africa, argues that the introduction of modern seed varieties (including hybrid and genetically modified seeds) can contribute to “ecological deskilling” and undermine food sovereignty.