The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has released their annual flagship publication on the theme “Investing in agriculture for a better future”. The report says that farmers are the largest investors in developing country agriculture and argues, therefore, that farmers and their investment decisions must be central to any strategy aimed at improving agricultural investment.  However, they need a favourable climate for agricultural investment based on economic incentives and an enabling environment. 

A new study from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Future Forests shows that mixed forests, in comparison with monocultures, have positive effects on several different areas, including production. The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, is based on material from the Swedish National Forest Inventory and the Swedish Forest Soil Inventory and examined the relationships between multiple ecosystem services and both tree species richness and tree biomass in boreal and temperate forest. By examining the role played by the occurrence of diverse tree species for six different ecosystem services (tree growth, carbon storage, berry production, food for wildlife, occurrence of dead wood, and biological diversity), the study demonstrates that all six services were positively related to the number of tree species.

A perspective paper published by Environmental Research Letters revisits the 2004 study by Pacala and Socolow that deployed seven wedges of different existing energy technologies to address climate change. At the time of that paper’s publication, each wedge would avoid one billion tons of carbon (1 GtC) emissions per year after 50 years. In this new perspective paper, its authors show that as a result of increased emissions, merely achieving what was considered "business-as-usual" in 2004 would require the development and deployment of 12 wedges; stabilizing emissions at current levels would require another 9 wedges; decreasing emissions to the level needed to prevent climate change would need an additional 10 wedges. Altogether, 31 wedges would be required to stabilize the Earth's climate.

The journal Animal Frontiers is running a two-part series on livestock and food security. The first installment (second installment to run in July) covers a range of issues, including: the role of animal (including fish) production in food security in developing countries,  trade in livestock products; the links between animal product consumption and chronic diseases; pastoralism; and livestock breeding.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMECHE) has produced a report entitled “Global Food Waste Not, Want Not,” which highlights the challenge of feeding a growing population, in a world where up to 50% of food is wasted. The report looks at where food waste takes place, the need to produce more food with finite resources (land use, water, and energy), and provides recommendations as to what the engineering should do to yield greater productivity.

A new book entitled “Principles of Sustainable Aquaculture: Promoting Social, Economic and Environmental Resilience” by Stuart W. Bunting of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex serves as an advanced level textbook focusing on developing more sustainable aquaculture practices.