In this piece, FCRN member Professor Michael W. Hamm provides a short commentary on a paper featured and discussed previously by the FCRN. Full citation for the paper is as follows: (Tom, M, Fischbeck, P.S., and Hendrickson, C.T. (2015) “Energy use, blue water footprint, and greenhouse gas emissions for current food consumption patterns and dietary recommendations in the US” Environ Syst Decis, DOI 10.1007/s10669-015-9577-y).Mike is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Regional Food Systems at Michigan State University.For other blogs Mike has written for the FCRN, see: Feeding cities - with indoor vertical farms?, the 3 part blog-series on City region food systems and lastly, his post about the inclusion of sustainability considerations in the US dietary guidelines report.

This piece discusses the findings of a recent paper by de Ruiter and colleagues, Global cropland and greenhouse gas impacts of UK food supply are increasingly located overseas.  The full abstract and citation are provided below. This post is written by FCRN member Henri de Ruiter. Henri is a PhD Student at the University of Aberdeen and the James Hutton Institute. Henri graduated with a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Behavioural and Neurosciences from the University of Groningen. His current PhD project considers the implications of meeting a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet for future land use.Henri would welcome your thoughts on the paper. Add a comment in the field below this blog-post, but note that you need to be signed in as a member to write a comment.

This piece, written by the lead author, provides further commentary on "Energy use, blue water footprint, and greenhouse gas emissions for current food consumption patterns and dietary recommendations in the US."This post is written by Michelle Tom, a research associate at Carnegie Mellon University. Michelle recently earned a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU. Her research investigates the relationship between human health and natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions within the transportation and food supply sectors of the U.S. 

In this piece, FCRN member Rafael Silva and Professor Dominic Moran review new empirical evidence on beef production and deforestation in Brazil.Rafael is undertaking a PhD titled “Modelling sustainable intensification in Brazilian agriculture” at the University of Edinburgh and Scotland’s rural College (SRUC). Rafael holds a bachelor degree in Applied and Computational Mathematics (2010) and a Masters in Applied Mathematics (2013), both from the University of Campinas, Brazil. During his Masters Rafael worked for the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and for SRUC on the Animal Change project, which focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production. Recently he was contacted by the Ministry of Agriculture in Brazil to provide analysis supporting the calculation of the livestock sector’s contribution to Brazil’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDCs). His main interests are in modelling agricultural systems, particularly modelling the role of Brazilian livestock systems on deforestation and in climate change mitigation.Dominic Moran is professor of applied economics at University of Edinburgh and Scotland’s rural College (SRUC) specialising in the areas of environmental and resource economics and policy analysis in developed and developing countries.

In this piece, FCRN member Anna Taylor takes the Pass the parcel series on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) forward after Marcel Beukeboom’s post on multi-stakeholder partnerships. You can read the first post by Corinna Hawkes here and Emile Frison’s second post here.Anna Taylor works as Executive Director of the Food Foundation since June 2015. The Food Foundation is a new independent organisation working to influence policy across the food system. She took up the post after 5 years at the UK Department for International Development (DFID) where she led the policy team on nutrition. Before joining DFID, Anna worked for a number of international organisations, including Save the Children and UNICEF. She has been at the forefront of international leadership on nutrition for several years.Note that this will be the last piece in the series on the SDGs. We will bring you another Pass the parcel series focused on another topic soon. Do get in touch if you have suggestions for a particular topic and if you would like to contribute.

In this piece, FCRN member Neil Chalmers discusses a recent paper he co-authored with Matthew Brander (University of Edinburgh Business School) and Cesar Revoredo-Giha (Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) published in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.Neil is studying a PhD titled “Demand for low carbon food products” at the University of Edinburgh. Neil was educated at the University of Stirling where he received a BA (Hons) in Economics. He then moved to Denmark and received an MSc in Agricultural Economics from the University of Copenhagen. His main interests are the economics of consumer behaviour and carbon policy and modelling the likely effects of agricultural and environmental policy. Neil has also completed an internship with the Scottish Agricultural College focusing on modelling policy implications for Scotland.

In this piece, FCRN member Marcel Beukeboom takes up where Emile Frison’s blog-post on the SDGs left off, introducing nuances in partnership development and cross-sectoral collaboration. This piece can also be read as a continuation of the first pass the parcel post by Corinna Hawkes. Marcel Beukeboom heads the Food & Nutrition Security cluster at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands and is currently co-chair of the Steering Committee of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), alternate member of the Global Agenda Council for Food Security and member of the Transformation Leaders Network of the World Economic Forum, and member of the Steering Committee of the Food & Business Knowledge Platform.You can contact Marcel via member messaging here (note you will need to be logged in as a member on the FCRN website). We also welcome comments below this post– again; you’ll need to be logged in.

In this piece, Emile Frison responds to the questions posed by Corinna Hawkes’ initial post on the SDGs: "What are some specific actions we can take to increase coherence between policies designed to enhance nutrition and those designed to promote sustainability? And what are the governance mechanisms we need to implement them?" Emile is Chair of the International Scientific Committee on Sustainable Food Systems of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation; a Member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food); and Former Director General of Bioversity International. During his time at Bioversity, he developed a strategy entitled “Diversity for Well-being” focusing on the contribution that agricultural biodiversity makes to the sustainability, resilience and productivity of smallholder agriculture and to the nutritional quality of diets. You can contact Emile via member messaging here (note you will need to be logged in as a member on the FCRN website). We also welcome comments below this post are of course welcome – again, you’ll need to be logged in.For the two subsequesnt posts in the series see; Creating successful multi-stakeholder partnerships key to address the Global Goals – the experience of The Netherlands by Marcel Beukeboom who heads the Food & Nutrition Security cluster at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands and the last post in the series, Metrics Matter by Anna Taylor, Executive Director of the Food Foundation.

In this piece, Duncan Williamson reviews the Global Nutrition Report in the context of other developing food and sustainability policy.Duncan has been working internationally in the field of sustainable systems for 20 years. For the last seven, has been leading WWF UK’s food work while also leading the international WWF Network’s position on sustainable diets and coordinating its work on sustainable food security- which recently co-produced a report with the Food Ethics Council entitled: From Individual to Collective action; exploring the business cases for addressing sustainable food security. Duncan is the originator of WWF’s ongoing Livewell project, which demonstrates that a healthy diet can be sustainable.  He also interacts closely with other organisations, including Eating Better , a cross sectorial coalition on NGOs working on meat consumption, where he is a director. An FCRN member since 2009, Duncan sits on the FCRN’s advisory board.