The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council has passed a resolution concluding the UN Declaration for the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. The Declaration will be used to influence national policies on food, agriculture, seeds and land, while keeping in mind the interests of rural food producers - if, that is, the Declaration is adopted by all UN Member States after a vote in November.

A new lab-grown meat startup, Meatable, claims that it has overcome a key technical barrier - the use of serum from unborn animals to grow cells. Meatable’s meat-growing process allegedly does not need serum, because it uses pluripotent stem cells (avoided by other startups because they are hard to control). Meatable also claims their process only needs to take one cell from an animal (as opposed to a larger piece of tissue).

The book “Changing the food game: market transformation strategies for sustainable agriculture”, written by Lucas Simons, discusses how markets can be changed to support a sustainable food system. Chapter topics include how food production impacts the world, market failures, and phases of market transformation.

This book, edited by Chiara Tornaghi and Chiara Certomà, critically explores the social and political implications of urban gardening.

FCRN member Christopher Schlottmann and Jeff Sebo, both of New York University, have written a book discussing empirical, ethical, and social dimensions of food, animals, and the environment, providing both big picture and more detailed analysis, including updated statistics.

The UK’s Global Food Security programme has published a think piece that argues for a systemic approach to food sustainability and health by governments and businesses. The report argues that the whole food system must be examined to identify the root causes of problems before policies are designed.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has published guidelines for the assessment of nutrient flows and their associated environmental impacts in livestock supply chains. The guidelines are aimed at people and organisations who already have a good working knowledge of life cycle assessment of livestock systems, and are intended to promote consistency through defining calculation methods and data requirements.

The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published “Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit” - a summary of the responses to its consultation.

Rice cultivation emits methane and nitrous oxide, which are both more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. Policies to reduce methane emissions from rice farming generally recommend using intermittent (as opposed to continuous) flooding. However, intermittent flooding could produce much higher nitrous oxide emissions than continuous flooding, according to a recent paper.