The Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU) has published a policy brief that investigates the relationship between farming practice and sustainability at landscape scales. The vital role played by biodiversity in providing services that support life on Earth has become clearer in recent years, requiring increased care to maintain them. There are strong debates, however, about how to achieve a balance between increased and more sustainable production. One aspect of the debate suggests that this could best be achieved by some areas specialising in intensive farming, while other areas are managed for wildlife, rather than aiming to farm entire landscapes in a wildlife-friendly manner. This is sometimes known as the “land sparing versus land sharing debate.” The paper notes that thinking at the landscape scale is key to understanding the environmental costs/benefits of a farm, because: • A farm is part of a larger landscape and its environmental impact depends partly on the bio-physical environment and the way neighbourhood farms are managed. • The environmental context is created by different habitats, topologies, soils and climate, making different places ecologically and environmentally different. • Neighbourhood effects arise as different species of wildlife may move across many farms during their lives, or may move from farmed land to non-farmed land nearby at different stages of their life cycles. • Some landscapes may be more naturally biodiverse than others, or be better suited to intensive production. While the paper focuses on the UK context, the general issues it explores are relevant to other contexts and at wider scales. The full paper can be found here.

In One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?, Sir Gordon Conway explains the many interrelated issues critical to our global food supply from the science of agricultural advances to the politics of food security.

In its first “UN-REDD Report”, the Programme explores the linkage between deforestation and the agricultural sector and suggests ways forward for consolidating the global agendas of curbing climate change and ensuring food security for all.

A study published this week by Charles Benbrook of Washington State University finds that the use of herbicides in the production of three genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops (cotton, soybeans, and corn) has actually increased over the last sixteen years. Benbrook writes that there is a strong correlation between the emergence and spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds and the upward trajectory in herbicide use. We are particularly keen to hear your comments on these findings. How well do you think the study was designed? How do these findings compare to other studies in other regions of the world?  

This blog by Daniel Tan, Senior Lecturer in Agriculture at University of Sydney, discusses how one might eat both healthy and sustainably.

The book ‘Challenging Consumption’, produced by the CONSENSUS research team, explores the topic of sustainable consumption. It includes discussions on future scenarios and innovations for sustainable food consumption practices. The book was launched in Dublin on 12th June 2014 by Dara Lynott, a Director of the Environmental Protection Agency who funds CONSENSUS research.

This research argues that we need to implement a food waste hierarchy approach to preventing and managing food surplus and waste. It argues that a distinction between food surplus and waste is crucial as is the distinction between avoidable and unavoidable waste. Its main message is that food waste can be prevented by adopting a sustainable production and consumption approach and by tackling food surplus and waste throughout the global food supply chain.

A summary of a discussion on sustainable diets, hosted by the Guardian, is now available on their website. It sought to take a holistic approach to the interlinked issues of food, farming, environment and health, focusing on the issues of how a sustainable diet should be defined and achieved.  Discussants included Jo Confino (Chair) Executive editor, the Guardian, Tim Lang Professor of Food Policy, City of London and David Nussbaum Chief executive, WWF, Tim Smith Group quality director, Tesco. You can read the summary here. See also FCRN discussion papers focusing on what a sustainable healthy diet is and how it can be achieved.