There seems to be a strong focus on livestock at the moment.  Greenpeace International has also entered the field now, with a new report, Ecological Livestock. Focusing on Europe, the report explores livestock production and consumption can be reduced to fit within ecological limits, such as biodiversity, climate change and water use.

Oxfam has published a report, Behind the Brands, which assesses the ethical performance of the ‘big 10’ food companies against criteria such as transparency of supply chains and operations, ensuring the rights of workers, protection of women's rights, the management of water and land use, policies to reduce the impacts of climate change and ensuring farmers’ rights.

A report commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been published , focusing on the environmental problems caused by nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrient flows and identifying the actions that could be taken to reduce excessive nutrient use.  The research was led by Mark Sutton at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and carried out by 50 exports from 14 countries.

This letter in Global Change Biology responds to a paper published earlier in the year in Nature Climate Change by de Silva et al (summarised by the FCRN here) which concludes that a combination of strict land controls and an increase in beef production in the Amazon could lead to greater emissions reduction than a scenario of land control and no beef production increases.

This book by Michael I. Brown presents a major critique of the aims and policies of REDD as currently structured, particularly in terms of their social feasibility. With deforestation being a key source of greenhouse gas emissions and of climate change, and forests representing major sinks for carbon initiatives such as REDD, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, have however been widely endorsed by policy-makers.

In this comment piece in Nature, a group of researchers argue that putting a price on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to curb emissions must form the centrepiece of any comprehensive climate-change policy. They point out that the current price of carbon remains much too low relative to the hidden environmental, health and societal costs of burning a tonne of coal or a barrel of oil. The global average price is below zero, once half a trillion dollars of fossil-fuel subsidies are factored in.

Abstract Our global food system is undergoing rapid change. Since the global food crisis of 2007-2008, a range of new issues have come to public attention, such as land grabbing, food prices volatility, agrofuels and climate change. Peasant social movements are trying to respond to these challenges by organizing from the local to the global to demand food sovereignty.

Abstract Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility.

This report written by Andreas Wilkes and Lanying Zhang for the International Institute for Environment and development (IIED) provides an overview of issues in sustainable agriculture in China, the country’s evolution to a modern, high-external input agriculture and the sustainability implications of this development. The report also looks into issues such as land tenure reforms and roles of cooperatives.