The Agricultural Model intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is an international collaborative effort to improve agricultural modelling and to understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector at global, national, and regional scales. They have produced a beta version of a visualization tool for the assessment of current and future agricultural systems. 

This new report by the Sustainable Food Trust, ‘The hidden cost of UK food’, presents an analysis of the price of the externalities (and subsidies) of the UK food system, which they compare to the amount of money spent on food and non-alcoholic drink at consumer outlets. 

This article presents the results from a new global soil erosion model, based on a combination of remote sensing, GIS modelling and census data. It finds that accelerated soil erosion due to land use change between 2001 and 2012 is a major threat to soil and future agriculture but that previous commonly used estimates of annual global soil erosion were twice too high. In comparison with previous studies which had a mapping resolution of around 10–60 km cell size, this model with its high-resolution 250m cell size has far greater predictive power than any previous model. 

This article by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC examines four pervasive myths about women in agriculture: 1) 70% of the world’s poor are women; 2) Women produce 60 to 80% of the world’s food; 3) Women own 1% of the world’s land; and 4) Women are better stewards of the environment. For each myth, the authors examine the relevant literature to evaluate any truth behind it and to identify its underpinning assumptions and fallacies.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a worldwide map that details croplands in high resolution in an ongoing effort to monitor croplands and water use.

This piece by the international NGO Futures Centre highlights the emergence of some innovative solutions that could help the transition to a sustainable protein consumption and production system.

The Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, partnering with the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, has released an update to the toolkit Good Laws, Good Food: Putting Local Food Policy to Work for Our Communities. The toolkit is intended as a guide for advocates who seek to influence food law and policy in their local communities in the US.

Targetting the food-energy-water nexus, this review by FCRN members Eugene Mohareb and Martin Heller and colleagues summarises the energy implications of various types of urban agriculture. The goal of their research is to identify resource efficiency opportunities while increasing urban food production.

This new study by FCRN member Paul Behrens and colleagues investigates the environmental impacts of a nationally recommended diet when compared to the national average diet for 37 nations across the world, including 9 middle income nations.