A recent issue of The Global Food Security (GFS) programme’s Insight series, which intends to provide a “balanced analysis of food related research for use by policy-makers and practitioners”, explores aquatic farming in the UK. 

The International Dairy Federation (IDF), the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the IFCN Dairy Research Network (IFCN) have collaborated on an extensive study on international dairy feeding systems to explore how differences within these systems for dairy cows, water buffaloes, sheep, and goats and between large and smallholders can affect a range of issues - from the nutritional content of the milk to the level of GHG emissions involved in the production process. Each of the three organizations had differing stakes in the research. 

This review, published in Nature Climate Change, concludes that the role of no-till agriculture in mitigating climate change may be over-stated . No-till and reduced tillage are methods of establishing crops with low soil disturbance as opposed to conventional tillage involving ploughing or other practices.

This paper published in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - looks at the environmental costs of food production and in particular livestock based food production.  The paper is based on annual 2000–2010 data for land, irrigation water, and fertilizer from the USDA, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy.

Food taxes & subsidies are effective at improving diets, according to a systematic review carried out by Australian researchers and published in the journal Nutrition Reviews. The systematic review analyses evidence from research published between January 2009 and March 2012 looking at the effectiveness of food taxes and subsidies on consumption. Included in the review were only papers assessing a specific food tax and those which directly and prospectively observed consumer responses to a fiscal policy intervention.

This new paper published in Nature Climate Change, focuses on food demand-side climate change mitigation options. It suggests that if current trends continue, food production alone will reach (if not exceed) the global targets for total greenhouse gas emissions in 2050. Diet preferences are shifting globally toward meat-heavy western foods with a high GHG-impact and this, combined with a growing global population, imply that even if we manage to increase agricultural yields (through for example sustainable intensification), this will not be enough to meet projected food demands.

This report from Centre for Agricultural Strategy at the university of Reading discusses the use of soya in UK livestock feeds. It describes how UK livestock production has become increasingly intensive over the last 20 years with a declining number of livestock farms rearing fewer, more productive animals, which require more nutrient dense feeds, containing a higher proportion of high quality protein. As UK agriculture has been unable to meet all of the demand from for vegetable protein, imported soya bean meal has largely filled the gap.

This video presentation on the topic Elements of a Regional Dairy Strategy for Asia and the Pacific, features Vinod Ahuja, Livestock Policy Officer at FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

As part of a new food and drink buying standard,  UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that from 2017 all of central government will commit to source public sector food locally.