Anke Brons is a PhD Candidate in environmental sociology at Aeres University of Applied Sciences, Almere and Wageningen University. Her research focuses on inclusive healthy and sustainable food systems in a Western urban context. She holds an MSc degree in International Development Studies from Wageningen University. You can find her on Twitter.

In this blog post, Christian Reynolds (Knowledge Exchange Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield) discusses "Hacknights" for exploring diet and climate data, run by the Greenhouse Gas and Dietary Choices Open source Toolkit project. This blog post has been published in collaboration with the UK Data Service - read the corresponding post on the Data Impact Blog here.

Riana Topan is a campaign manager with Humane Society International/Canada, which together with its affiliates is the largest animal protection organisation in the world. She works to protect farm animals by advocating for higher-welfare policies and regulations, and supports institutions in offering plant-based food options that are better for the animals, the environment, and human health. You can reach her here. ​

The 2016 version of China’s dietary guidelines revised by Chinese Nutrition Society (CNS) was launched in May this year and has generated a lot of buzz, for example in Washington Post and from the Guardian. This is due mainly to the Less Meat Less Heat campaign that the CNS jointly released with WildAid, where Chinese stars and Hollywood figures have appeared on billboards and in videos as a part of their behavior change campaign to reduce meat consumption in China.

In this piece, Tom Kuehnel introduces the plant protein crop initiatives supported by the Vegan Society within the context of Brexit and protein policies.Tom Kuehnel is an FCRN member and the Campaigns and Policy Officer for The Vegan Society. The Vegan Society is the oldest vegan organisation in the world; its founding members coined the term ‘vegan’ when it was founded in 1944. The Vegan Society works towards a vegan world for the benefit of animals, people, and the planet. You can contact Tom at: tom.kuehnel@vegansociety.com    

This blog-post from Martin Persson at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden takes on the timely question of how one should measure the climate impacts of different greenhouse gases.  He begins by explaining what the two most common metrics - Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the Global Temperature change Potential (GTP) – actually measure.  He then moves on to focus specifically on beef and associated methane emissions. In light of the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting warming to 2oC he argues that the ‘right’ metric to choose needs to reflect the specific climate policy that the measurement is to serve.Martin Persson is an Associate Professor at Physical Resource Theory, Department of Energy & Environment at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. In addition to metrics, his research focuses on global land use in relation to climate, biodiversity, and conservation policy. In a recent paper he and his colleagues show that the consumption and international trade of beef, soy, palm oil and timber products are dominant causes of deforestation in the tropics.

The UK’s fresh fruit and vegetable supply system is vulnerable to water-related risk.  In this blog-post Cranfield University’s Chloe Sutcliffe and Tim Hess introduce a new project, part of the “Resilience of the UK Food System in a Global Context” (GFS-FSR) programme, where they investigate these risks. 

This piece, written by the lead author, provides further commentary on "Energy use, blue water footprint, and greenhouse gas emissions for current food consumption patterns and dietary recommendations in the US."This post is written by Michelle Tom, a research associate at Carnegie Mellon University. Michelle recently earned a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU. Her research investigates the relationship between human health and natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions within the transportation and food supply sectors of the U.S. 

In this piece, Mike Hamm continues his thread on urban food systems, expanding into the nuances of production.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.