As input prices surge, extreme weather is the norm and margins become tighter, food producers are making significant changes. Benchmarking to compare performance, author Lisa Jack argues, is essential to manage and assess these changes. She provides an overview of existing practices and explores the potential for them to drive sustainable innovation. 

The US Department of Agriculture funded this report by the National Academies of Sciences to explore the evidence of the interconnectedness of soil, plants, humans and other animals and if advances in this field could lead to drug development, address anti-microbial disease and soil-borne pathogens. 

EIT Food surveyed European consumers to investigate the perceptions of regenerative agriculture. It found that people don’t often think about farming methods, view conventional farming with admiration and a source of national pride without recognising its impacts. 

This report by Changing Markets provides an in-depth investigation into the tactics of meat and dairy companies to delay, distract and derail action on food system transformation, particularly reducing meat and dairy consumption. It argues that it mirrors the strategies used by tobacco and fossil fuel industries. 

This paper argues that research on genetically engineered crops in Africa fails to consider and report the social impacts, mainly focusing on crop yield and income and little or no attention paid to poverty alleviation, food security or gender equality. 

Groundwater exploitation across the world is causing land degradation and hunger, but stopping it without complementary policies would also undermine food security, the study finds. It explores five scenarios and finds that increasing efficient use of rain, investment in agricultural R&D would mitigate the effects of ending groundwater exploitation. Eating less animal products in high income countries would enhance this further. 

The study analyses how crop diversity impacts yield stability at a national scale, and finds that the stabilising effect of crop diversity increases as the land area increases. This doesn’t diminish the importance of field-level diversity, but it has implications for national strategies to diversify crop production. 

Methodology matters. Which figures scientists and researchers choose as benchmarks, what papers they choose, or exclude for their calculations, matter. This is because of the power of statistics to shape narratives and provide arguments that call for distinct solutions. The debate and backlash to the recent FAO report Pathways to Lower Emissions, a global assessment of emissions in livestock agri-food systems is over precisely this point; how the use of a single statistic has the potential to shape ideas about the future of food. 

This book explores the narratives of food systems transformation and how power manifests within food systems manifests. Intended for students, scholars and policymakers, this book deals with the contesting and competing nature of these diverse narratives which tell stories of change and how the food system should work in the future, and what or who might be left out from these imaginations.