The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) has launched the “Big Facts” website, a set of 30 facts integrating research on topics that include food demand, agricultural emissions, climate impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. 

A new book by Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockström argues that we are in deep denial about the magnitude of the global environmental challenges and resource constraints facing the world. The authors argue that regardless of whether governments respond to the economic crisis through additional stimulus packages or reduced government spending, environmental and resource constraints will remain.

In many circles, it is taken as a matter of fact that to be able to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2050, farmers everywhere are going to have to adopt the intensive agricultural practices that have been perfected in the US heartland where massive amounts of corn and soybeans are harvested almost every year. For the most part, this production system also separates crop agriculture from livestock agriculture composed of large chicken complexes, huge hog production facilities, and massive feedlots.

This study by CE DELFT, a Dutch independent research and consultancy  organisation , examines how food consumption patterns might be influenced in order to reduce food related GHG emissions. Its stated objective is to identify and  analyse  policy options which offer potential for achieving this goal.

This paper, produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), explores the opportunities for climate change mitigation in the agricultural sector through the use of carbon markets. Carbon markets have not yet brought the technical potential for agricultural mitigation to fruition due to constraints on both the demand and supply side in terms of limited market opportunities and constraints to project implementation.

The Danish government has officially ended its tax on saturated fat just a year after it was introduced, and has cancelled a proposed sugar tax.

The most severe and extensive drought in at least 25 years is seriously affecting U.S. agriculture, with impacts on the crop and livestock sectors and with the potential to affect food prices at the retail level.

The journal Oxford Review of Economic Policy features a number of articles devoted to the topic of biodiversity policy and economics in its Spring 2012 edition.