This post is written by Helen Breewood, research and communications officer at the FCRN. She blogs about global sustainability issues at The Progress Motive. You can find her on Twitter. She is writing this post in her personal capacity.

This blog post looks at publicly available data on the UK’s imports of soy and its use for feed and food. It also considers the limitations of these data and the links between different uses of soy and land use change in South America.

Leah Garcés is the president of international non-profit animal advocacy organisation Mercy For Animals and author of Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.

Martin Rowe is the co-founder and publisher at Lantern Books. For the last three years, he has followed the development of a new generation of plant-based meat and dairy analogues, as well as that of cultured or “clean” meat. Drawing on research encapsulated in his paper, Beyond the Impossible: The Future of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy, which he wrote for Brighter Green and the Vegan America Project, Rowe notes some of the challenges accompanying these developments in the food, environmental, and technological spaces.

Hibba Mazhary is a part-time PhD student in Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. She divides her time between her thesis, teaching undergraduates, and undertaking various part-time research assistant roles, including one most recently at the RSPCA on laboratory rat welfare. Hibba is interested in all things farm animal welfare and food sustainability.

In this piece, FCRN member Mike Hamm critically considers the environmental sustainability of vertical- and indoor farming. In particular, he explores and challenges claims that fully indoor production systems can provide a significant source of food for urban areas at low carbon cost.  Ultimately, he argues that there are a number of other urban and peri-urban food growing options that offer greater potential, and deserve more policy attention and support.Michael W. Hamm is a C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University and Director of the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems. Mike is also a Visiting Fellow of Mansfield College and the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, and an FCRN network member.

In this piece, FCRN-member Professor Michael Hamm discusses a number of contested issues linked to the challenges posed by growing urbanisation. This is the first in a short series of postings by Mike in which he explores the value of city-region food systems, obstacles to their development, and possible ways forward. Read the following parts in the blog-series by following these links:  Part II – Who Will Farm?, Part IIIA – Scale and Production Strategy and finally Part IIIB - Scale and Production Strategy.This post is written by Michael W. Hamm, C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University and Director of the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems. Mike is also a Visiting Fellow of Mansfield College and the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, and an FCRN network member.

In this piece, Elin Röös summarizes and contextualizes both the development and controversies of the Swedish Food Agency's recently released dietary guidelines.Elin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences working for the Future Agriculture initiative at the same university, which is a strategic multidisciplinary research platform that addresses the sustainable use of natural resources with emphasis on agricultural production and food systems. Currently she is visiting the Food Group at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, working with future scenarios for protein production and consumption, and engaged in the FCRN network.

In this piece, FCRN advisory board member Vicki Hird covers the contention of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty, introducing the politics and potential of the major negotiation. Vicki (MSC FRES RSA) is a food, farming and environmental professional with 25 years’ experience in research, policy advocacy and campaigning with some great wins, some moderate successes, some useful failures, many reports and a book on food and farming policy. She started out studying slime mould ecology and agricultural pest control but got sidetracked…