At the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) 2018, the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) spoke about the need for lower emissions from the livestock industry. In addition to efficiency gains, Graziano da Silva suggested that governments target the demand side with policies that reduce meat and dairy consumption. He said that alternative sources of protein, such as fish and pulses, are available and should be used.

Swiss company Eaternity has developed a set of tools to aid restaurants and chefs to get insights into the supply-chain of the produce they use and improve their nutritional and environmental impacts. The tools include a series of health and sustainability indicators and labels and a menu design app.

This article in Food Navigator discusses a start-up company which produces dairy proteins, from sugar and genetically modified yeast. The resulting proteins can be used in a wide range of products to replace animal-produced dairy protein, such as in chocolate, ice cream, protein shakes and yoghurt.

This special edition of ‘Duurzaam Bedrijfsleven’ (in Dutch) is dedicated to food issues.

This article in the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) journal examines NGOs’ opposition to agricultural biotechnologies. It finds that opposition to genome editing cannot be dismissed as being solely emotional or dogmatic, as is often asserted by the scientific molecular biology community (see for example this 2016 letter by 107 Nobel Laureates calling NGO action against GM a "crime against humanity”). Instead, opposition to genome editing among research participants was rooted in three areas of scepticism around the framing of food security problems and the proposed solutions.

This book, edited by Bruce Frayne, Jonathan Crush and Cameron McCordic, argues that programmes aimed at reducing food poverty in Africa overemphasise small-scale farmers and ignore urban food security.

This book by Helmut Traitler, Michel Dubois, Keith Heikes, Vincent Petiard, David Zilberman provides an overview of current food systems and potential future directions for agriculture and food.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has developed a new online tool. DOPA Explorer 2.0 provides allows users to explore and compare protected areas, with regard to their species and ecosystems, and the pressures they are exposed to through human development. 

This paper by researchers in Peru and Spain recognises the as yet uninvestigated potential for developing countries, such as Peru, to mitigate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by changing dietary patterns, given that food represents a high proportion of household expenditure. The study employed Life Cycle Assessment to analyse the impacts of 47 Peruvian diet profiles.