This book discusses how food systems models can be used to understand both the impacts of agriculture and food across multiple dimensions of sustainability and the ability of the food system to provide nutrition despite global environmental change.

This report from the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs presents detailed statistics on food security in the UK, covering global food availability, UK food sources, food supply chain resilience, household food security, and food safety & consumer confidence. 

This report from London-based think tank the Green Alliance reviews the evidence on how carbon can be sequestered on working farms and the challenges that must be addressed if such sequestration is to be incorporated into markets for carbon credits.

This report from the UK’s Nature Friendly Farming Network sets out information on how farming land is currently used in the UK, on greenhouse gas emissions from different farming types, and on how farms can use nature-based solutions to reduce emissions while improving farming resilience in the face of climate change.

This report from the UK-based Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions quantifies greenhouse gas emissions arising from the UK’s food sector. It finds that when emissions are accounted for using a consumption basis (which accounts for emissions associated with imported and exported food), emissions are 52% higher than when a territorial basis is used (only including emissions generated within the country).

This report from the International Labour Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank examines the implications of net zero emissions policies for employment patterns in Latin America and the Caribbean. TABLE readers may be particularly interested in the report’s comments on jobs in agriculture and plant-based food production, as well as the impacts of dietary change.

This study surveyed people from 119 countries about their experiences of food environments and food acquisition practices during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020). Many respondents experienced physical distancing requirements at food shops (90% of respondents), restricted access to stores (77%), stockpiling foods (67%), increased awareness of food waste (63%) and buying more food due to fear or anxiety (47%).

This paper looks at the climate impacts of dietary shift towards plant-based foods in high-income nations. It finds that adoption of the EAT-Lancet diet in 54 countries could both reduce annual agricultural production emissions from those countries by 61%, and spare land that could sequester carbon equivalent to 14 years of current global agricultural emissions, through restoration to the natural vegetation associated with today’s climate in each location.

This paper assesses the extent to which the recommendations of 41 food reports could transform the food system. It argues that few reports are targeting “leverage points” that could result in the most change, and that reports often neglect the implications of power differences between actors.