This article presents the results from a new global soil erosion model, based on a combination of remote sensing, GIS modelling and census data. It finds that accelerated soil erosion due to land use change between 2001 and 2012 is a major threat to soil and future agriculture but that previous commonly used estimates of annual global soil erosion were twice too high. In comparison with previous studies which had a mapping resolution of around 10–60 km cell size, this model with its high-resolution 250m cell size has far greater predictive power than any previous model. 

This new report by the Sustainable Food Trust, ‘The hidden cost of UK food’, presents an analysis of the price of the externalities (and subsidies) of the UK food system, which they compare to the amount of money spent on food and non-alcoholic drink at consumer outlets. 

The Agricultural Model intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is an international collaborative effort to improve agricultural modelling and to understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector at global, national, and regional scales. They have produced a beta version of a visualization tool for the assessment of current and future agricultural systems. 

The Food Ethics Council has published a free, special edition, online magazine – ‘For whom? Questioning the food and farming research agenda' – that brings together the thoughts and opinions of over 30 experts.

This blog by Annabel de Frece and Rebecca Wells talks about their work as teaching Fellows for the Innovative Food Systems Teaching and Learning (IFSTAL) Programme. IFSTAL aims to improve food systems teaching across universities in the UK. In the blog, the authors relate some of the rationale behind the teaching methods.

This edition of Newshour Extra hosts a panel of experts to discuss whether 'the pleasures of eating meat are worth the costs.'

The planetary boundaries concept provides a theoretical upper limit on human activity which the planet is able to sustain without major perturbation to the current ‘Earth system’. Previously, nine planetary boundaries (PBs) have been proposed and recently Steffen et al. (2015) have updated these boundary definitions and assessed the current state of the position of human activity with respect to each boundary. In this article, researchers from a number of food, climate change, agricultural and environmental research institutions around the world build on this work by assessing the impact of agriculture on each PB status, based on a detailed literature review of the available research.

This Research Handbook, edited by Mary Jane Angelo, Fredric G. Levin and Anél Du Plessis, brings together scholars from across disciplines and across the globe (including FCRN member Jonathan Verschuuren) to untangle the climate-food web and critically explore the nexus between climate change, agriculture and law, upon which food security and climate resilient development depends. It is a useful introduction to the research which is being undertaken in the area of climate change and agricultural law.

This new study by FCRN member Paul Behrens and colleagues investigates the environmental impacts of a nationally recommended diet when compared to the national average diet for 37 nations across the world, including 9 middle income nations.