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Are livestock always bad for the planet?

Research programme PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) has produced this report, which argues that debates around livestock’s climate impacts are distorted by a focus on intensive production systems in rich countries. It argues that these debates ignore the millions of people who depend on relatively low-impact forms of extensive livestock production, and makes suggestions for how to include pastoralists in debates on the future of food.

The role of food environments for sustainable food systems

This policy briefing produced by the EU Food Policy Coalition provides an evidence-driven review of how food environments - i.e. the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural context in which people make decisions about consuming food - shape food demand. It argues that food environments are key to transforming the food system, by making healthy, sustainable foods the options that are the most available, accessible, affordable, enjoyable and widely promoted.

Concentration and power in the food system

This book - which has been revised and updated since its first publication in 2016 - explores how large firms exert control over the food system, how initiatives such as microbreweries and seed saving networks are opposing these power dynamics, and how Big Data and automation might shape the food system.

Where now after the UN Food Systems Summit?

News and resources

Tim Lang of the Centre for Food Policy reflects on the UN Food Systems Summit, which took place on 23 September 2021, in this blog post published by the Food Research Collaboration. Lang suggests that the most significant outcome of the Summit might be an “omni-framework” approach, i.e. assessing and measuring food systems on multiple fronts including diets, environment and climate, livelihoods, resilience, governance and so on.

Redefining farming as land stewardship

News and resources

This blog post by Caroline Ashley of Forum for the Future argues that we need to reframe our ideas about what farming is: away from the idea of farmers as producers of a specific crop, and towards a concept for farming as land stewardship with farms receiving multiple income streams including payments for ecosystem services.

Exploring the ebbs and flows of Regenerative Agriculture, Organic and Agroecology

The regenerative, organic and agroecology movements share many concerns, and offer seemingly similar solutions. We, at TABLE, therefore began to ask ourselves if they are perhaps repeated attempts to articulate the same things, or whether there are substantive differences. Dr George Cusworth (U Oxford) and Rachel Carlile (U Edinburgh) worked with graphic designer Emily Liang (WUR) to develop a diagram articulating these agricultural movements' similarities and differences.

Transcript - Episode 16

Ep16: Charles Godfray and Pat Mooney debate the future of food systems

Podcast episode

At what scale should future food systems operate when it comes to growing sustainable food, reducing biodiversity loss, and employing different technologies?

On flesh and the spirit: understanding British Muslims’ meat consumption

Hibba Mazhary is a part-time PhD student in Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Hibba first entered the department as a BA Geography undergraduate in 2013, before going on to complete an MSc there in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance. She divides her time between fieldwork, teaching undergraduates, and undertaking various part-time research assistant roles, including a project on parenting and the gut microbiome, one on meat normalisation media narratives, and one with the RSPCA on laboratory rat welfare. Hibba is interested in all things farm animal welfare and food sustainability. Her first TABLE blog, in which she sets out the aims of her PhD research, can be found here: Distancing death: slaughter, welfare and consumption in the British halal meat industry.