This week in Fodder we’re featuring a constructive and uplifting interview with two researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, Petra Berkhout and Jeanne Nel. They are the authors of this year’s Mansholt report which explores the future of food and land use in the EU, constructed around five key food system dilemmas. 

This book by Molly Anderson focuses on the contested nature and competing narratives of food system transformations, or the stories we tell ourselves and others about how things work. Narratives are closely connected with theories of change, although food system actors frequently lack explicit theories of change.

Julie Guthman digs into the solutions for food and agriculture currently emerging from Silicon Valley, arguing us to stop trying to fix our broken food system through finite capitalistic solutions and technological moonshots that do next to nothing to bring about a more just and sustainable system. 

This report by the Food and Land Use Coalition highlights that 51% of China’s agricultural emissions could be mitigated with the widespread adoption of healthy and sustainable diets and 11 million deaths per year could be prevented globally if the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet was fully adopted. 

This report by Nesta, authored by the UK government’s former food policy advisor Henry Dimbleby and public health expert Dr Dolly van Tulleken, draws on interviews with former prime ministers, health secretaries and other senior ministers to offer practical advice and insights on how today’s politicians can tackle to UK’s obesity crisis.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food claims that despite an overall increase in climate finance between 2017 and 2022, the portion of funding for food systems has slipped further, down from 3% to 2.5%, and even further when we consider sustainable food systems, at just 1.5%.

This report by the Food Foundation highlights the performance of major UK retailers, businesses and food manufacturers and what steps they are taking to shift to healthier and more sustainable diets. They claim that while some businesses are making progress, there is still a huge amount of work to be done.

Scientists explore how the lifecycles and shared economic benefits of UPFs and plastics interact to produce a range of direct and indirect harms, and warn that the chemical dimensions of these harms are underappreciated with thousands of plastics known to be found in food. They question whether UPFs and plastic chemicals are fit for purpose when these products' production and consumption add to chronic chemical exposure. 

This is a systematic review of dairy alternative products and their outcomes for justice. The researchers argue that the heavy-handed regulation of dairy alternative terminology and the market-driven nature of this transition raise questions about injustices in governance and innovation in this sector.