The Department of Energy and Climate Change has published its provisional 2011 estimates of UK greenhouse gas emissions, together with final estimates of 2010 UK greenhouse gas emissions by fuel type and end-user.

McDonald's has launched a long term programme to support British and Irish farmers, with efforts to boost the number of young people in the industry and improve environmental and animal welfare standards.

The goals of this study were to: (a) develop a robust, model-based life-cycle GHG emissions comparison of organic and conventional farming methods for a relatively large selection of crop products;

This interesting study, commissioned by Unilever presents the range of GWP (global warming potential) values for 27 crops grown worldwide, looking both at the variability of values for the same crop across countries as well as differences between crops. 

This is an interesting presentation, given by Eric Davidson of Woods Hole Research Center, at the recent Planet under Pressure conference in March 2012.  The presentation is a summary of a paper he has forthcoming in Environmental Research Letters. 

This report by the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change (CCAFS) reviews the scientific evidence to identify a pathway to achieving food security in the context of climate change. It says that food systems must shift to better meet human needs and, in the long term, balance with planetary resources. 

This article in the Vancouver Sun looks at the work being done in Canada to promote local sourcing of foods in schools and hospitals  - interesting to note parallel activities in different countries.  

The International Livestock Research Institute and the World Bank hosted a meeting on livestock in Nairobi on the 12-13 March.  Some of the presentations may be of interest, in particular:

This paper firstly considers the argument that intensification in the Brazililan livestock sector can help reduce land use change pressures (the ‘land sparing’ argument). It then uses an economic model-based analysis to make the point that intensification in the Brazilian livestock sector to increase productivity on a given area of land will only halt deforestation if it is accompanied by policies to alter the fact that extensifive cattle rearing is still marginally profitable.