UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD PRESS RELEASE A policy known as sustainable intensification could help meet the challenges of increasing demands for food from a growing global population, argues a team of scientists in an article in the journal Science.

Achieving food system sustainability is a global priority but there are different views on how it might be achieved. Broadly three perspectives are emerging, defined here as: efficiency oriented, demand restraint and food system transformation. These reflect different conceptualisations on what is practically achievable, and what is desirable, underpinned by different values and ideologies about the role of technology, our relationship with nature and fundamentally what is meant by a ‘good life.’ 

This paper reviews one aspect of the food sustainability challenge: the goal of producing more food – a goal that is unthinkingly accepted by some and vigorously contested by  others. The paper argues that increased food production is necessary but also emphasises that this alone, as a response to the challenge, is not sufficient.

The Food Climate Research Network has published a major new report focusing on China’s changing food system. Appetite for Change provides a detailed and integrative analysis of the dramatic changes in China’s food system over the last 35 years, and explores the linkages among the environmental, health, economic and cultural trends that are emerging.  

We are pleased to announce a new FCRN discussion paper which considers the increasingly topical question of: ‘What is a sustainable healthy diet?’ 

Late December last year Tara Garnett, researcher on food systems and climate change and coordinator of the FCRN, initiated a meeting that brought together Marian Dawkins, Prof in Animal Behaviour at Oxford University, Jude Capper, researcher and livestock sustainability consultant who has worked mainly in the US, and Elin Röös, Swedish LCA researcher and the initiator of the Swedish Meat Guide,  for an informal discussion on the subject of sustainable intensification of agriculture and what that entails for the animal welfare of farm animals.

In April 2014 the Food Climate Research Network organised a workshop, funded and hosted by the Wellcome Trust with additional support from the Food Security programme of the UK research councils. Its aim was to bring people together to develop a research agenda on how our eating practices might be shifted in healthier and more sustainable directions.  Particular emphasis was placed on meat eating as an exemplar of an important, yet difficult aspect of our consumption practices, and one with a strong bearing on health and sustainability.

Government leadership and substantial investment in research are needed to shift global consumption habits towards eating patterns that are both healthy and sustainable, say academics, industry and NGOs representatives in this report.

In 2014, the FCRN released a major report entitled Appetite for change: social, economic and environmental transformations in China’s food system. This provided a detailed and integrative analysis of the dramatic changes in China’s food system over the last 35 years, explored emerging environmental, health, economic and cultural trends and challenges, and identified policy and research implications.