Agricultural and forestry products that are traded internationally use around 22% of global agricultural land and account for 27% of global land-use emissions, according to this paper. Land-use emissions include those from both land use change, such as deforestation, and agricultural processes, such as from livestock’s digestive systems. Animal products account for the majority of land use but only 14 to 19% of net embodied emissions. One of the major trends observed between 2004 and 2017 was a decrease in Brazilian export to Europe and the US coinciding with an increase in Brazilian exports to China.

Using satellite imagery, this paper characterises the impacts of nitrogen oxide pollution on crop growth - a relationship which has remained poorly understood until now. Consistently negative impacts of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) on crop greenness (which is correlated with growth and yield) were found across five major agricultural regions. The authors estimate that crop yields could be increased by reducing nitrogen dioxide pollution.

To safeguard biodiversity, 44% of the global land area needs to be covered by conservation measures such as protected areas or land use policies, finds this paper. The proportion of land that must be conserved varies by country, with high values in countries such as Canada (84%, because of its extensive intact ecosystems), and Costa Rica (86%, because it hosts many species). On average, the calculated values show that more land should be conserved in developed economies (55%) than in developing economies (30%), partly due to large ecologically intact areas of Canada and Australia. The authors stress that any conservation policies must respect the rights of people living in the affected areas.

This report by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and Transformational Investing in Food Systems Initiative describes six case studies of food initiatives that have used unique investment strategies, such as a Mexican beekeeping cooperative that used loans from specialist agricultural and ethical banks that have lower interest rates than commercial banks. It also sets out five recommendations for how the investment community can support the transition to healthy, equitable food systems.

The Food Research Collaboration sets out the tools available to measure the sustainability of “sustainable food hubs” - initiatives that source food from producers and sell it to customers while upholding certain sustainability principles. The tools include Better Food Traders membership and accreditation, an evaluation framework developed by the New Economics Foundation, a framework by Shared Assets for assessing local economic resilience, a social impact toolkit developed by several organisations, and the Sustainable Food Trust’s Global Farm Metric.

This book argues in favour of using cultural change to shift human diets away from farmed meat and dairy products, on the grounds of health, environmental impact and animal welfare.

Focusing on dairy cattle, this book explains the factors contributing to animal welfare, makes the business case for improving welfare, and sets out case studies linking welfare to increased productivity.

This history of Russia’s cuisine looks at the links between food and hunger, climate, politics, and social structures.

The global extent of farmland has peaked and is declining, according to this data visualisation from Our World in Data. The visualisation compares three different sets of data, which disagree on the total extent of agricultural land but which all agree that the peak occurred somewhere between 1990 and 2000. The decline in land use comes from pasture; croplands, on the other hand, are still expanding. In part, the decline in pasture extent is caused by a shift towards intensive grain-fed livestock rearing methods.