The book chapter Why sustainable plant-based diets are needed to reverse the food-climate-health-equity crisis by FCRN member David A Cleveland, part of the book Plant-based diets for succulence and sustainability, argues that plant-based diets are a key part of the response to the interlinked crises in food, climate, health and inequality.

This report from the Food Ethics Council sets out how UK food businesses and government could learn from the Danish food system. Although Denmark and the UK have similarities, e.g. in climate, Denmark ranked 7th in the 2018 Food Sustainability Index while the UK ranked 24th. 

This report by US think tank ReThinkX examines the implications of ongoing disruptions to livestock industries. It predicts that current livestock production will be replaced to a large extent by a “Food-as-Software” model, where food can be engineered on the molecular level and produced using “precision fermentation”, e.g. using engineered microorganisms to produce proteins that mimic milk proteins. 

This report from UK NGO alliance Sustain aims to help policymakers at the city level understand the role of food, farming and land use in policies designed to respond to climate change and protect nature. 

This report from the UK Food Ethics Council details the verdict reached by the “jury” in the event “Food Policy on Trial: In the dock – plain packaging on junk food & drink”. The jury (consisting of four volunteer members of the Food Ethics Council) concluded that much stronger regulation is required on food and drink packaging, for example banning the use of cartoon figures to market unhealthy foods to children, but also thought that introducing plain packaging on certain foods and drinks should be kept as a potential future intervention rather than introduced immediately.

This report by the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London sets out how a “Food in All Policies” approach to food systems challenges can meet goals not only relating to food but also relating to education, social inclusion, livelihoods and fair economic development. 

This paper outlines the main sustainability challenges linked to nitrogen, including inadequate access to nitrogen fertiliser in some parts of the world and excessive fertiliser application in other areas, leading to water pollution, algal blooms and risks to human health. The paper argues that solving nitrogen problems would have co-benefits for other sustainability issues such as hunger, air, soil and water quality, climate and biodiversity.

This commentary article sets out five priorities for developing the so-called “blue economy” (i.e. ocean-based activities such as fishing, aquaculture, tourism, seabed mining and shipping) in a way that is both environmentally sustainable and socially equitable. The article notes that human activities are already negatively affecting ocean ecosystems and that future economic development of the oceans may have further, sometimes poorly understood, impacts on both the environment and people.

This interactive feature from the Global Reporting Program, an investigative journalism organisation, uses text, images and video to explore the fishmeal supply chain, including its sources, its uses in aquaculture, overfishing, waste sludge from fishmeal factories and competition between industrial fishmeal producers and small-scale fish processors.