The European Commission was due to publish a Communication on Sustainable Food in 2013 to “assess how best to limit waste throughout the food supply chain, and consider ways to lower the environmental impact of food production and consumption patterns”.  This long-awaited Communication has still not been published.

This set of papers reports on findings from the most recent undertaking of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). The CHNS is a long-term ongoing longitudinal cohort with in-depth community data and household socio-demographic data and very detailed diet, activity, body composition and cardiometabolic measures representative of large populations in China, the largest and one of the most rapidly changing countries in the world.

In this open letter a large number of civil society organisations present a critique of the use of ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’, a concept that is gaining increasing attention among governments, NGOs, academics, corporations and in international policy. They state that they have concerns around the aims of the 'Global Alliance on Climate Smart Agriculture' to establish policies to enable farming to deal with the impacts of climate change.

The Sustainable Seafood Coalition (SSC) has launched a new 'labelling code', intended to ensure that consumers are sure about what environmental claims on fish and seafood mean. A new 'sourcing code' accompanies the labelling and ensures that the coalition members source their fish and seafood products responsibly.

This report from Oxfam discusses large-scale partnerships between governments in Africa and donors and multinational companies. “Moral Hazard? ‘Mega’ public–private partnerships in African agriculture” is as the name suggests critical of these partnerships (PPP) and questions whether these partnerships lead to poverty eradication and improved rural livelihoods. The report argues that this way of mobilizing funds for the agricultural sector is often unproven and risky.

The annual report 2013 from Bioversity international contains a special discussion on “Improved nutrition through sustainable food choices”. The sustainable diets research by Bioversity focuses on food and food systems, taking into account food diversity and how it can be produced and acquired across all seasons and under different economic circumstances.

A major new report released by a commission of global leaders finds that governments and businesses can improve economic growth and reduce their carbon emissions together. Rapid technological innovation and new investment in infrastructure are making it possible today to tackle climate change at the same time as improving economic performance.

A recent study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes explores the perils of conducting economic research in a vacuum. The researchers found that after completing a lesson in calculative economics participants were significantly more likely to behave in selfish ways and ‘engage in unethical behaviors to better themselves’. However, those participants who instead completed a history lesson (in this case specifically on the industrial revolution) were less likely to behave selfishly after.

This paper in the journal Food Security analyses the genetically modified (GM) seed industry. The paper states that since many scientists, policymakers and citizens are calling for sustainable intensification of global agriculture (providing high yields and incomes without adverse environmental impacts) it is crucial to discuss the important role of the seed sector in such plans. The paper “Taking Stock of the Genetically Modified Seed Sector Worldwide: Market, Stakeholders, and Prices” assembles comprehensive data on the contemporary GM seed industry and its importance within the seed sector as a whole.