NGOs have warned in an open letter to state leaders that 34 million people are currently at risk of famine, with many more experiencing hunger. The letter says “These people are not starving, they are being starved” and points to drivers including violence, inequality, the impacts of climate change, loss of land or jobs, and the impacts of COVID-19. They call for $5.5 billion to be provided to support immediate food assistance.

This book explains how True Cost Accounting - i.e. the practice of tallying up all of the environmental and social costs and benefits associated with the production of a good or service - can be used to reform the food system.

This report by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition presents a “Double Pyramid” of food systems, which aims to illustrate eating styles that are both healthy and environmentally sustainable. The model (view it here) uses a “health” pyramid and a “climate pyramid”. In both, foods are placed vertically according to whether it is advised to eat them more frequently (towards the bottom of the pyramids) or less frequently (towards the top of the pyramids).

This rapid evidence review from CCAFS Low-Emissions Development assesses the performance of agroecological approaches in low- and middle- income countries. Based on over 10,000 studies, it finds that agroecological practices such as farm diversification, agroforestry and organic agriculture can help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in both mitigating and adapting to climate change through their food systems.

This report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) explores what the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and government responses mean for the effort to transform food systems to be more healthy and sustainable. 

This paper co-authored by Table member Toni Meier quantifies the levels, environmental impacts and reduction potential of food waste produced in the business, healthcare and hospitality food service subsectors in Germany. It finds that significant waste reductions could be achieved within one year, with the greatest potential reduction of 17% being found in the healthcare subsector.

This editorial in the Nature Food journal discusses the role that technology can and should play in reforming the food system. It argues that while technologies such as cultured meat, precision agriculture, drones and artificial intelligence are expected to contribute to sustainable food security in the future, technology often creates unexpected impacts that are hard to predict and that must be mitigated. Furthermore, it says, ethics and traditional knowledge systems are key to transforming the food system.

This paper surveys farmers and environmental scientists in Germany and Austria on their attitudes towards biodiversity-friendly management practices for agriculture. It finds significant differences between the attitudes of these different stakeholder groups. The motivation for the study was to examine why farmers rarely use certain biodiversity-oriented management practices despite growing scientific evidence for their benefits.

This paper analyses data from selected hashtags on Twitter (specifically, #sustainablemeat, #ethicalmeat and #eatlessmeat) to outline how social media discussions of meat consumption relate to emerging societal narratives around the role of meat in sustainable healthy diets.