In this episode of the Climate Proof-Food Podcast, food system research student Luke Spajic interviews Table’s Dr Tara Garnett on the history of research about food’s contribution to climate change, the EAT-Lancet Commission, contestation around livestock’s environmental impacts and three common perspectives on what to do about it, and what constitutes a healthy and sustainable diet.

This book makes the case for an “agroecological urbanism” (urbanism is the study of how people who live in cities and towns interact with the built environment). Chapters cover the foundations of agroecological urbanism, activist methodologies, decolonisation and decommodification of the food system, soil contaminants, urban agroforestry, post-capitalist food sovereignty, and case studies from Italy, Belgium, Mexico, Nicaragua and England.

This book examines the challenges of adapting the food system to a changing climate. Arguing that corporate food production has colonial origins, it makes the case for “deep adaptation” and rejuvenating local and regional food systems.

This report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) examines three questions: how have food systems performed to date and what role did policies play? How can policy makers design coherent policies across the triple challenge of providing food security, livelihoods and environmental protection? How should policymakers treat the facts, interests, and values that often complicate the task of achieving better policies? It also presents case studies on the seed sector, ruminant livestock and processed foods.

This report for the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA), co-authored by Table member Christian Reynolds, reviews how citizen science methods can be applied to food policy. Citizen science means actively involving citizens and communities in collecting data and creating new knowledge.

Table member Tom Quested has co-authored this report for the United Nations Environment Programme. The report presents up-to-date and comprehensive estimates of food waste around the world, based on the collation of a large number of national estimates of food waste. It also presents a methodology for countries to measure food waste consistently. The report focuses on waste from households, food service and retail.

This perspective article, co-authored by several Table members including Christian Reynolds, discusses the possibilities and challenges of using natural language processing and artificial intelligence to assess the nutritional and sustainability characteristics of recipes. The authors conclude that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary, combining artificial intelligence with expert domain knowledge.

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.

Ask The Author recording: Considering plant-based meat substitutes and cell-based meats On 12 March 2021, TABLE hosted an “Ask The Author” session with Raychel Santo, Brent Kim and Jan Dutkiewicz, co-authors of the paper Considering Plant-Based Meat Substitutes and Cell-Based Meats: A Public Health and Food Systems Perspective.