Small is Successful! Creating sustainable livelihoods on ten acres or less   Small is Successful! is the outcome of 12 months research commissioned by the Ecological Land Co-operative (ELC). This research addressed the lack of information on financially viable, small scale farms in the UK.    Working with eight real life case studies, the report demonstrates that economically viable and highly sustainable land based livelihoods can succeed on holdings of ten acres or less. The report and its policy recommendations opens up truly affordable opportunities for new entrants into farming.  

The report presents examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America to demonstrate approaches to integrate food and energy crops that offer benefits to poor rural communities. It underscores that integrating crops can be an effective climate change mitigation approach. The report describes the benefits of generating biogas for cooking, the reduction of time spent collecting fuel wood and the use of compost from generating biogas.

  The Sustainable Development Commission has published its report Making Sustainable Lives Easier: A Priority for Governments, Business and Society.  

This news comes from FCRN mailing list members in Sweden:   The Swedish Climate Certification for Food initiative is now up and running.  The scheme was initiateed  in 2007 by KRAV and Swedish Seal (Svenskt Sigill) in order to develop a climate certification for the food chain. Currently, the project is managed in cooperation with several major Swedish food companies: Milko, Lantmännen, the Federation of Swedish Farmers, Scan and Skånemejerier.  

This report was commissioned by Pulse Canada (pulses as in peas and beans) and written by FCRN member, Chris Anstey, formerly of Tesco.  

On the subject of labelling and information in general, a recent article in European Voice reporting on the findings of a European study (EUFIC) into shopping in France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and the UK, finds that on average only 17% of people look on the pack at all for nutritional information.

The Danish Øresund Food Network and Øresund Environment Academy have recently published a report entitled: Climate Change and the food industry– Climate labelling for food products: Potential and limitations The report seeks to: Present the concept of climate labelling for food and its various forms; Provide an overview of existing examples of implementation of climate labelling for food as a way of informing consumers about climate impacts of food products;

This report from the Forum for the Future published in July 2008, explores the potential of carbon labelling. It concludes that carbon labelling does have a role to play in moving people towards a low-carbon shopping basket, but that trying to put a label on everything isn’t the answer.

Two reports written by researchers at the Tyndall Centre Manchester and Manchester Business School, and funded by the University of Manchester Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) were published in late 2008.