In this policy brief, the Food Research Collaboration summarises points relevant to food and diet in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group 3 report, published in April 2022. The summary notes that both individual and policy-level choices about food are highly relevant to climate change and could make significant contributions to climate mitigation; that action is required on both consumption and production; that demand-side interventions can have beneficial effects for health; that individual action alone is not sufficient; and that “choice architecture” can influence demand patterns.

The UK’s National Food Strategy brought the term “agroecology” into mainstream policy discussions. This policy insight from the Food Research Collaboration traces how different definitions of the term have evolved, with varying degrees of emphasis on agroecology’s agricultural practices and political aims. The National Food Strategy defines agroecology mostly in terms of on-farm activities, rather than as inherently interlinked with wider food system shifts.

This report from IPES Food explores the factors underlying the increase in global food prices, which in April 2022 were 34% higher than a year previously. It focuses on the impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as broader structural issues in the global food system, including heavy reliance on food imports, barriers to changes in production systems, excessive speculation in grain markets, and vicious cycles of climate change, poverty, conflict and food insecurity.

Developed economies such as the UK, Germany and Japan could suffer the greatest economic losses from sudden declines in pollinator populations, due to their dependence on imported crops, according to this modelling study. The paper estimates the changes in production levels and market prices that would occur for 74 animal-pollinated crops following sudden pollinator loss due to three causes: high use of pesticides; natural disasters such as drought; or countries being unable to pursue sustainable agricultural policies due to high levels of debt.

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) on UK cropland, i.e. adding crushed rocks to soils (read more about the process here), could sequester 6–30 MtCO2 yr−1 by 2050, providing up to 45% of the atmospheric carbon removal necessary to reach national net zero goals. ERW can also reduce nitrous oxide emissions from soils, reduce soil acidification (through formation of carbonate) and reduce fertiliser requirements (by increasing supply of phosphorus and potassium). The paper questions the need for energy-intensive milling of rocks into fine particles, finding that particles on sites with high weathering potential are weathered rapidly regardless of size.

This paper explores how people’s moral views towards different animals change between childhood and adulthood. Based on surveys with participants in the UK, children were found to be less likely than adults to show speciesism (defined as assigning moral worth to beings based on their species), less likely to categorise farm animals as food as opposed to as pets, more likely to think farm animals should be treated better (than adults would treat them), and less likely to think it is morally acceptable to eat meat or animal products. The authors hypothesise that people learn to reconcile inner moral conflicts about eating animal products by forming a hierarchy in which some animals are given a lower moral standing.

Replacing 20% of ruminant meat consumption with microbial protein - specifically mycoprotein from fungal mycelium - could offset increases in global pasture area, reduce methane emissions, and halve annual CO2 emissions from deforestation, according to this life cycle assessment (LCA). However, reductions in emissions from deforestation may plateau as the proportion of meat replaced by microbial protein grows. The paper discusses the methodological limitations of static (as opposed to dynamic) LCA.

This paper offers a global review of the environmental, economic, social, health and ethical impacts of meat consumption, including trends in consumption over the past few decades. It also explores how the sector can become more sustainable by changing both production and consumption practices.

This joint event with TABLE and the Oxford Martin School on 24 February 2022 took the format of a panel discussion with: Dr Tara Garnett (director of TABLE and fellow of the Oxford Martin School); Dr Helena Wright, Policy Director at the FAIRR Initiative; Dr Pablo Manzano, Ikerbasque Research Fellow at the Basque Centre for Climate Change; and Dan Blaustein-Rejto, Director of Food and Agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute.