Human use and alteration of land has profound effects on the environment, both locally where it takes place, and at the planetary scale via climate change and other mechanisms.  This building block explains what is meant by land use and land use change, both direct and indirect. Last update: 06 February, 2018 https://www.doi.org/10.56661/4af265b4

Today, billions are malnourished: not eating a diet containing energy and nutrients in healthy amounts. Both lack of food and excess of consumption cause huge levels of disease worldwide. To a significant extent, the food systems in which people participate determine what people can and do eat (i.e. their diets); and as a consequence, their health. Food systems are, therefore, central to solving many of the world’s biggest health challenges. But the way in which they affect health in different regions and among different groups of people is complex, and varies greatly. An understanding of these interconnections and their effects is needed, in order for food systems to be changed in ways that promote human wellbeing.

The role of animals in food systems, and the degree to which their needs should be accounted for as compared to humans, are ethical issues about which there is both concern and disagreement.  This building block explains what is meant by the concept of animal welfare. Last update: 15 Dec, 2017 https://www.doi.org/10.56661/ad46e825

Many social, economic, moral, and environmental concerns are interconnected and interact with each other through food, and do so in complex ways. In order to understand this, we need to apply a 'systems thinking' approach to food. This building block explains what is meant by the term 'food system' and provides a brief introduction to the food systems approach.  Last update: 15 Dec, 2017 https://www.doi.org/10.56661/be6ff2e7

How food gets to our plates and what happens afterwards, connects many issues of concern, including health, biodiversity, climate change, livelihoods, and more. This chapter, and associated resources, provides an entry point into ‘food systems’ thinking and the multifaceted set of issues that are connected through food. It provides a foundation for the wider set of ideas and complexities that are explored in the other chapters of Foodsource.

It is an internationally agreed objective to cut human-caused greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Given the major contribution of food system activities to total human-caused emissions, reducing these emissions is of great importance. But how and by how much can emissions be reduced, while also feeding a growing population? There are different perspectives on how food systems emissions can be reduced and it is helpful to explore these since these differences also underpin many other debates around food system sustainability. Understanding these perspectives helps to put specific proposals for reducing food system emissions into a wider food systems context.

Food systems are central to human well-being. We rely on them for nourishment, employment, livelihoods, culture and more. Reliable access to sufficient food is a foundation of human health, and of social and political stability. While the impacts of food systems on the environment are great, changes to the climate and the wider environment — to which food systems contribute — also have major implications for the functioning of food systems and all that they support. Understanding this matters, because sustainable food systems in the future must not only maintain human well-being with fewer environmental impacts, but must also be able to cope to different environmental conditions to those experienced today.

Emissions resulting from the many activities involved in food systems, account for a substantial portion of all human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, as such, contribute to climate change. A major challenge for the sustainability of food systems is, therefore to figure out how its contribution to GHGs can be reduced. If we are to be able to address and mitigate food systems’ contributions to climate change, it is important to understand where and how the greenhouse gas emissions arise across the whole food system. Also important, is to understand how different ways of organising parts of the food system, can result in differing levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Eating patterns (or diets) are an important point of interconnection in food systems between human health and wider environmental impacts. Shifts in how people consume towards sustainable health eating patterns can bring multiple benefits. And when they are undertaken by whole populations, their overall effects can be considerable. Although there is much we still don’t know, the broad trends of what sustainable health eating patterns look like are known well enough to take action today. However, this presents another difficult challenge: how can eating patterns (at the individual and population scale) be shifted towards those that are healthier and more sustainable? Understanding this problem and its potential solutions provides a useful primer on the way in which consumption in food systems takes place through a combination of human choices (whether conscious or not), and is influenced by the wider contextual environment that actively constrains and influences these choices.