According to the market reseach company Key Note, the market for vegetarian foods in the UK reached a value of £786.5m in the year ending January 2011, up 7.7% from £730.4m in the year ending January 2007. 

The EU food and drink industry has published its vision for 2030, setting out its commitments for the next two decades.  As far as I can see there are no tangible targets as regards emission reduction and so forth. What it says instead is as follows:

This paper points out that the potential for producing bioenergy from crops depends on a great many factors including assumptions about gains in agricultural productivity, patterns of food demand, political stability, policies on biodiversity and so forth.

This is a useful and readable opinion piece highlighting some fundamental errors in thinking about biofuels.

The Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM) and the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) have published a ‘key messages’ statement for Rio+20. The document highlights the problems caused by excessive nutrient use on the one hand, and insufficient use on the other, and identifies nine key actions as being central to improving nutrient use efficiency, thereby improving food and energy production while reducing N and P losses that pollute our environment. 

This is a very interesting paper that reviews the literature on the relationship between consumption and GHG  emissions, between population and emissions, and the interactions among all three. It raises doubts that improvements in technology, or shifts in patterns of behaviour (consumption) will be sufficient in addressing GHG emissions unless combined with a greater focus on population growth (scale effects). 

The Global Network of Science Academies (IAP) comprising the world’s 105 science academies, have issued a statement highlighting the relevance of population and consumption to the future of both developed and developing countries and reminds policy-makers preparing for Rio+20 of the need to consider a number of issues.