This book, based on the Planetary Health Diet produced by the EAT-Lancet Commission, discusses how dietary patterns influence health and the environment and make recommendations for which food groups to favour and which to avoid.

This book uses food as a lens to explore the history of human development. It explores the links between food and exploration, colonialism, slavery and capitalism, as well as the environmental implications of current industrialised food systems.

This report, from the US think tank The Breakthrough Institute, sets out policy options for the US government to decarbonise the economy despite a polarised political climate, focusing on the energy, transport and agriculture sectors.

This policy paper from the European Environmental Bureau (a network of environmental citizens' organisations) sets out a proposal for mainstreaming agroecology within the policies that govern food systems in the European Union. The paper defines agroecology as a paradigm shift that encompasses approaches such as organic and regenerative farming.

The UK Government has published the final report of the Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity, led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge. The review sets out a new framework for how we should account for nature in economics and policy.

Table member Dominic Moran has written a letter to the editor of the journal Nature Food. In it, he argues that the debate on livestock production and consumption ought to be viewed through the lens of market failure (that is, a situation in which the incentives that influence individual behaviour lead to a suboptimal outcome for society at large) and externalities (costs or benefits produced by a transaction that affect people other than the buyer and seller). Moran concludes that assessing the extent of market failure in the livestock sector can help governments to decide to what extent to intervene.

This paper finds that the pest management choices of farmers in Switzerland depend on whether they are advised by public or private extension services (i.e. providers of technical information to farmers). In a survey of 733 Swiss fruit growers dealing with fruit fly infestations, those advised by public extension services were 9-10% more likely to use preventative measures such as nets, while those advised by private extension services were 8-9% more likely to use synthetic insecticides.

This study sets out the economic and social threats and opportunities that alternative meat products (i.e. plant-based meat replacements and cellular agriculture) pose to rural producers in the United States. It is based on interviews with 37 stakeholders, including researchers, farmers, non-profits, funding agencies, government agencies, and representatives from the cultured meat, plant-based meat, beef, soy and pea sectors.

This blog post by Dr Rosalind Sharpe of the UK’s Food Research Collaboration asks what is meant by a “sustainable food system”. A group of students on the Centre for Food Policy’s Master’s course discussed this issue, and came up with a list of attributes including “healthy, equitable, inclusive, affordable, nutritious, culturally sensitive, sustainable, circular, resilient, respectful, lasting and simply ‘real’”.