This report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation outlines three ways in which cities can promote a circular food economy: source food grown regeneratively and (when appropriate) locally; reduce waste and use by-products; and design and market healthier food.

Canada’s new dietary guidelines include environmental considerations as well as health, suggesting that diets higher in plant-based foods generally help to conserve “soil, water and air”.

This paper models the system-wide changes and consequent shifts in pre-retail greenhouse gas emissions that might result from introducing a Europe- or North American-style refrigerated food chain to sub-Saharan Africa. Total emissions might increase or decrease, depending on the scenario.

This paper presents a ‘carbon benefits index’ to measure how land use change contributes to global carbon storage and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The index accounts for both the carbon that could be stored if the land were reforested, and the carbon emissions of producing the same food elsewhere.

This paper presents the Open Source Seed (OSS) Licence, a new legal instrument (inspired by open source software) designed to protect access to plant germplasm as a commons accessible to everyone. The legally enforceable licence is being trialled with varieties of tomato, wheat and maize.

FCRN member Marie Trydeman Knudsen has co-authored this life cycle assessment of organic versus conventional milk production in Western Europe, which highlights the importance of including soil carbon changes, ecotoxicity and biodiversity in environmental assessments.

The ongoing government shutdown in the United States means that several databases and websites with agricultural and climate data are currently unavailable. Gro Intelligence is offering free subscriptions to its web app during the shutdown. The web app provides global food and agriculture data.

A new process, Seleggt, can determine the sex of a chick before it hatches from the egg, avoiding the culling of unwanted male chicks in the egg industry (which often happens by feeding live chicks into shredding machines). The first eggs produced using the process are on sale in Berlin.

Last week’s EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems has received mixed coverage and reactions, some of which we outline here.