There has been much media spotlight on the World Bank’s entry into the meat debate with its new report calling on governments in wealthier countries to shift subsidies from high-emitting red meat and dairy to lower-emitting poultry, vegetables and fruits. POLITICO said the report was bound to make conservatives apoplectic, while Climate Home News analysed why the meat has become a “political hot potato”. TABLE’s explainer, Meat, metrics and mindset, and the podcast Meat: The Four Futures explores the meat debate and why it’s about more than science, it’s about emotions.

This book by Access Agriculture, a non-profit organisation supporting agroecology and organic farming supported by the European Commission and the FAO, details youth engagement in agriculture as a critical area in Africa and India. The book provides an introduction of the importance of young entrepreneurs in agriculture and follows with a substantial number of case studies and stories from young entrepreneurs from many African nations and Indian states. 

This book offers an introduction to food studies, a multidisciplinary field concerned with animal welfare, the impact of climate change on food production, the nutrition of various food items, and fair, equitable and just working conditions for food labourers and workers. The book is a collection of essays from faculty members and graduates of the NYU Food Studies program

This book introduces the concept of the more-than-human to students and postgraduates engaged in geography and social science theory. The text offers valuable case studies which illustrate the implications of the more-than-human development and what future issues still need to be addressed.

This report by NGOs Sustain and Friends of the Earth calculates the quantities of manure that 10 UK livestock corporations produce – estimated at more than the 10 of the UK’s cities combined and how this directly contributes to the ecological decline of rivers. The report argues intensive agriculture is the main source of river pollution in the UK, not water companies, but reveals that only half of the ten agribusinesses mentioned have publicly available strategies to prevent pollution, and most lack detail and targets. 

Smallholder farmers, pastoralists and indigenous people face unprecedented threats to their land, according to a new report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES FOOD). The report explores the different drivers of land grabbing such as the fight for water and actors such as carbon off-setters and reveals that 1% of farms account for 70% of global farmland.

This article collection details several case studies related to assessing the barriers and opportunities for a sustainable food system transformation. This, for the authors, means an increased consumption of plant-based foods and lower levels of meat and dairy consumption, especially in the global North. The collection seeks to challenge incumbent actors and structures which the authors claim resist the critical transformative changes required whilst fostering new values, norms, and paradigms that could contribute to the societal change necessary for food system transformation. The case studies cover topics such as the polarisation of the animal-free and animal-centric food system narratives, new and alternative protein industries, different socioeconomic systems of agriculture and unique perspectives on human-animal relationships.

This article, using satellite data and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, seeks to map the global prevalence and rate of expansion of greenhouse cultivation, or food grown under the cover of thin plastic films or glass roofs. The authors present their method as an improvement to geospatial image analysis for greenhouse cultivation coverage. They claim this new method can aid efforts aiming to better understand the environmental and socio-economic impacts of greenhouse cultivation infrastructure expansion.

This study explores why commodity farmers in the U.S Midwest are adopting regenerative agriculture practices at scale but not participating in carbon farming programmes led by agribusiness. The authors find this is because regenerative farmers are sceptical of large food corporations and want to cut dependence on costly agro-chemicals. The research sheds light on what drives and facilitates regenerative transitions, and stresses the importance of new social relationships with other regenerative farmers.