A report from Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR), an investor initiative focused on the environmental, social and ethical issues of factory farming, outlines the drivers of demand for sustainable protein, how investors and companies are responding and how FAIRR has engaged with 16 global food companies.

The Sustainable Restaurant Association has launched its One Planet Plate campaign, asking restaurants to showcase sustainable and ethical eating by devising one dish that uses local sourcing, zero waste, better meat, lower carbon footprint or other environmental or ethical considerations. Hundreds of restaurants are taking part in the scheme.

This book, by agronomist and political scientist Marie-Hélène Schwoob, provides a multidisciplinary overview of China’s farming and food issues and presents the results of the author’s fieldwork.

The Cities & climate change science conference event was held in Edmonton, Alberta on 5-7 March. Recordings of some of the sessions are available here.

This book by Parke Wilde gives updated information on food policy in the United States. The second edition includes more detail on food justice and economic methods.

This book, edited by Fabricio Chicca, Brenda Vale and Robert Vale, calculates the environmental impacts of lifestyles around the world. FCRN readers may be particularly interested in Chapter 10, which looks at food.

In this paper, the authors conducted a review of numerous studies to examine the content, advantages and limitations of a frame-based approach to assist consumers in reducing their intake of conventional meat (e.g. eating less meat or different meat, such as organic or certified for animal welfare or environmental impact). Particularly, they want to evaluate whether behaviour can be shifted by creating new frames and to identify frames that can bridge a transition by highlighting ‘push’ factors away from routine meat eating, or ‘pull’ factors towards encouraging the consumption of alternatives.

UK farmers may be given targets to reverse soil damage and restore soil health by 2030, as part of an agricultural bill to be brought before parliament later this year.

This article examines the toxicity of ‘adjuvants’ in pesticides. Commercial pesticide formulations contain the active ingredient and various other chemicals - adjuvants - such as surfactants, antifoaming agents, preservatives, solvents and dyes. Adjuvants are generally neglected by health risk assessments of pesticides in the United States and the European Union. This paper uses the examples of glyphosate and neonicotinoids to illustrate that adjuvants can result in pesticides being significantly more toxic than the active ingredient alone. The paper calls for changes in regulation.