Over the past half-century, the paradigm for agricultural development has been to maximize yields through intensifying production, especially for cereal crops. But achieving food security and building a healthy, resilient global food supply is about more than just the quantity of calories provided. New metrics of success and methods of evaluation are needed in order to measure progress towards meeting the world’s nutritional needs within environmental limits.

FCRN members Prof. Dr. Susanne Stoll-Kleemann and Uta Schmidt (MSc.) have brought our attention to their recent article on reducing meat consumption.

This article in Science explores the importance of social norms as a factor in sustainable behavioural change. It notes that formal institutions can drive behaviours that positively influence, for example, environmental and public health outcomes (examples given include lead pollution and acid rain). However, in many instances, it is not possible to enforce collectively desirable outcomes. Social norms, so the authors argue, are a key entry point to meaningful change in relation to many global issues.

This paper by FCRN member Lukasz Aleksandrowicz and colleagues consolidates current evidence on the environmental impacts of dietary change, finding environmental benefits are possible from shifting typical Western diets to a variety of alternative dietary patterns. The results also highlight that there is still complexity in defining environmentally sustainable diets, though moderate reductions in meat consumption (particularly ruminant meat) replaced by plant-based foods, seem to reliably reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land use, and water use, as well as improve health.

Given the increasing popularity of vegan diets, a group of German researchers has created guidelines for chefs in public catering facilities. These take into account nutritional requirements.

New research shows that annual UK household food waste has fallen by 13% / 1.1 million tonnes (mt) over a three year period from 8.3mt to an estimated 7.2mt. Avoidable household food waste (i.e. food that could have been eaten) has reduced by 950,000 tonnes, or 18%, from 5.3 to 4.4 million tonnes annually.

The EU is considering plans to limit crop-based biofuels to 5% of transport fuel. 

This modelling study, published in Global Change Biology, finds that if indirect land use change (iLUC) factors are not accounted for when assessing the GHG balance of biofuels, then “the Renewable Energy Directive could be expected to deliver only a 4% carbon saving compared to fossil fuel, with a 30% chance that it would actually cause a net emissions increase.” 

This report by the FAO examines the important issue of the relationship between biofuel production and livestock: there can be synergies (ie. the use of biofuel co-products as animal feed) and trade offs (such as biofuel production effects on the price of grains).