This blog post by Caroline Ashley of Forum for the Future argues that we need to reframe our ideas about what farming is: away from the idea of farmers as producers of a specific crop, and towards a concept for farming as land stewardship with farms receiving multiple income streams including payments for ecosystem services.

Tim Lang of the Centre for Food Policy reflects on the UN Food Systems Summit, which took place on 23 September 2021, in this blog post published by the Food Research Collaboration. Lang suggests that the most significant outcome of the Summit might be an “omni-framework” approach, i.e. assessing and measuring food systems on multiple fronts including diets, environment and climate, livelihoods, resilience, governance and so on. 

This book - which has been revised and updated since its first publication in 2016 - explores how large firms exert control over the food system, how initiatives such as microbreweries and seed saving networks are opposing these power dynamics, and how Big Data and automation might shape the food system.

This policy briefing produced by the EU Food Policy Coalition provides an evidence-driven review of how food environments - i.e. the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural context in which people make decisions about consuming food - shape food demand. It argues that food environments are key to transforming the food system, by making healthy, sustainable foods the options that are the most available, accessible, affordable, enjoyable and widely promoted.

Research programme PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) has produced this report, which argues that debates around livestock’s climate impacts are distorted by a focus on intensive production systems in rich countries. It argues that these debates ignore the millions of people who depend on relatively low-impact forms of extensive livestock production, and makes suggestions for how to include pastoralists in debates on the future of food.

This report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) finds that 87% of current global government support for farming includes measures that are harmful to nature or health. It argues that redirecting - rather than eliminating - agricultural subsidies is key to making the global food system more healthy, sustainable and equitable.

This report from the Food Systems Handbook examines the impacts of crop pests and diseases on food security and farmer livelihoods, drawing on a roundtable of experts held in August 2021. It discusses the scale of the problems, the additional impacts that climate change is likely to have, and various interventions including genetic engineering, early warning systems, integrated pest management, post-harvest storage techniques, crop diversity, and legumes to enhance the soil biome.

This report by ActionAid USA examines corporate consolidation by US agribusinesses. It attributes the high degree of market control by a small number of multinational companies to decades of policy choices that supported corporate consolidation and larger farms. The report summarises the impacts on rural communities, such as loss of autonomy for farmers when using pricing models based on data-driven corporate recommendations. It also sets out an alternative model: a network of small-scale, localised farms and markets.

This paper compares the carbon footprint of broiler meat production in Europe with two uses of insect protein: either as chicken feed (in the place of soybean meal), or as food for direct consumption by humans. There is high variation in performance between insect species. On average, the carbon footprint per kg of protein produced for human consumption is lowest in the case of consuming insect protein directly as food, where the insects are fed on low-value industrial side streams. Replacing soybean meal chicken feed with insects can increase the carbon footprint, especially if the insects are fed on industrially produced composite feed as opposed to a waste stream.