This EU brief looks at a recent study assessing the social environmental impacts of agricultural imports to EU from other, often less developed countries. The EU has thus picked up on an important study assessing Europen diets' contribution to excessive land-use in countries outside of the European Union. FCRN has previously highlighted this study (Balancing virtual land imports by a shift in the diet. Using a land balance approach to assess the sustainability of food consumption).

WRAP has just published an assessment of how food waste levels have changed historically in the UK, and the potential impact of a range of ‘exogenous’ factors (such as population growth) and interventions (such as voluntary agreements with the food industry and campaigns such as Love Food Hate Waste) on food waste levels in the future (to 2025).

China’s agricultural system, environment and food supply is under great pressure from an increasing population, an intensive use of agro-chemicals and extensive food safety problems.

This article from the Urbanist takes a look at Japan’s indoor farming is portrayed. The successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan is shown through some staggering statistics: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.

The EU parliament has now approved a law which will merge the separate EU school milk and fruit schemes and boost their combined annual budget from €20m to €250m a year.

This report, produced by the Behavioural Insights Team, seeks to resolve an important area of uncertainty for obesity policy, asking, are official UK statistics on calorie consumption plausible?

Green Monday is a global sustainability initiative that was designed to promote green lifestyle choices.  In this video Phil Valko, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about the global Green Monday initiative and how making a small change to one’s food choices can have a major impact.