TABLE interviews Tom Heap about his new book Land Smart in which he explores many difficult tensions and trade-offs in land use, from biofuels versus solar panels and regenerative farming to biotechnology, and tiptoes into the emotionally-laden debate of dietary change – revealing his penchant for pragmatism. 

This report details the interconnectedness between food and fossil fuel consumption through the entire supply chain. The authors identify the key drivers of food system fossil fuel consumption, barriers to transformation and high-impact, no-regret opportunities to collaborate in the transformation of energy and food systems. 

This paper maps the global potential for producing 34 varieties of seaweed and uses five scenarios to model the impacts of expanding the use of seaweed for human food (10% of diets), animal feed (10% of intake), transport fuels (50%), all three of the previous uses, or supplementing ruminant feed (0.5% of feed) to reduce enteric methane production and increase feed conversion efficiency.

This paper sets out the case for a sugar tax, arguing that it can achieve both health and climate goals. It analyses the greenhouse gas savings of three different approaches that could follow a 75.5% reduction in sugar consumption in the European Union (to align with World Health Organisation guidelines): afforesting excess EU sugar beet farmland; using excess sugar beet grown in the EU for biofuel; and the EU exporting sugar from its own sugar beet production, thus displacing Brazilian sugar consumption on the global market, and importing an equivalent amount of sugar cane ethanol from Brazil to use as biofuel.

This book by FCRN member Paul Behrens uses paired chapters of pessimism and hope to show how much needs to be done to achieve a hopeful future, but how this would involve actively building a healthier and more fulfilling world. The book covers subjects including food, energy, climate and economics.

In this report, UK food waste NGO Feedback critically assesses the narrative that anaerobic digestion (AD) is a viable solution for producing renewable gas from organic matter such as crops and wastes. The report argues that preventing food waste in the first place is more effective than generating biogas from waste food, particularly if trees were to be planted on the land spared.

This textbook uses case studies and models to present an interdisciplinary perspective on the interactions between food, energy and water.

This paper, produced by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, outlines a system that could produce animal feed with lower environmental impacts than conventional soybean production. The system combines LED lighting, indoor photobioreactors, atmospheric carbon capture and geothermal energy to produce an algae-based feed product.

This book, by Jeremy Allouche, Carl Middleton and Dipak Gyawali, describes and critiques different understandings of the concept of the “nexus” between water, food and energy.