This report from the International Food Policy Research Institute IFPRI provides a comprehensive overview of major food policy developments and events. Leading researchers, policy makers, and practitioners review what happened in food policy, and why, in 2016 and look forward to 2017. This year’s report has a special focus on the challenges and opportunities created by rapid urbanization, especially in low- and middle-income countries, for food security and nutrition.

This is a new book on the concept of sustainable intensification in the context of smallholder agriculture.

This new 712 page book in 28 chapters is edited by Rajeev Bhat. It addresses a very wide range of topics on agriculture, food and sustainability.

Contemporary agriculture is often criticized for its industrial scale, adverse effects on nutrition, rural employment and the environment, and its disconnectedness from nature and culture. Yet there are many examples of traditional smaller scale systems that have survived the test of time and provide more sustainable solutions while still maintaining food security in an era of climate change. This book provides a unique compilation of this forgotten agricultural heritage and is based on objective scientific evaluation and evidence of the value of these systems for present and future generations.

Sight and Life publishes a magazine which covers a wide range of nutrition related topics in developing countries. Their latest edition focused on food systems and can be found here.  

The largest share of agricultural land in tropical landscapes is managed, not as large-scale industrial plantations, but by smallholders. This Nature Communications article integrates the interdisciplinary research of more than 20 research groups, and seeks to address gaps in our understanding of the ecological impacts of this smallholder-managed agricultural land. The study uses a multifaceted approach to investigating the crop choices that farmers make and how these choices impact on ecological and economic outcomes.

This report provides a developing country perspective on rural-urban linkages in food systems. It examines the role of rural-urban linkages in fostering inclusive and sustainable food systems, focusing in particular on sub-Saharan Africa.

Through the integration of gender analysis into resilience thinking, this book shares field-based research insights from a collaborative, integrated project aimed at improving food security in subsistence and smallholder agricultural systems.

Poor households in developing countries are sometimes included in livestock programmes by humanitarian organisations whereby they are given a cow, a pair of oxen, or a herd of goats. This paper analyses the impacts on the food security of recipients in these kinds of programmes and finds that the effect is positive.