The research papers presented in this issue on urban food policies provide a selection of the articles that were presented at the 7th Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference in 2015.

The world’s largest agricultural commodities supplier,  Cargill, obtained its highest profit in six years based on an increasing demand for meat. Animal nutrition and protein were the largest contributor to quarterly earnings for the company.

Birmingham researchers propose that the UK food labelling which currently is used on individual products should be expanded to the level of an entire supermarket receipt. The ‘traffic light system’ shows the total data for calories, sugar, fat and salt in a person’s shop and highlights the total in a green, amber or red colour.  

This article takes a closer look at the telecoupling between China and Brazil based on their soybean trading relationships. Telecoupling is the term used to describe the interconnectedness or coupling of natural and human systems and it indicates that there are complex socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances.

In this short perspective piece, researchers from the Netherlands, USA and the UK critically assess the COP21 4 per 1000 initiative, which seeks to increase global yearly agricultural soil organic carbon sequestration by 4‰ (= 0.4%, or 1.2 billion tonnes). The authors argue that as soil organic matter (SOM) also contains nitrogen (N), with a C-to-N ratio always approaching 12, this will require the sequestration of an extra 100 million tonnes of N per year, and they question the feasibility of achieving this. 

The EU40’s Animal Taskforce has produced a short report which outlines a proposed roadmap to supporting the EU livestock sector towards more sustainable practices.

Recognising that changing what people eat can make a major contribution to the environmental performance of the food system, the new and updated Livewell Plates in this report illustrate the minimal dietary changes required to reach the 2 °C climate target. The report presents simple steps – such as eating more plants, legumes and grains –  that could help cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030.

The People's Food Policy project has created a blueprint for action to change the food system in England. Their explicit aim was ‘to map out what an integrated food policy would look like if people were put at the heart of decision-making.’

The Food Citizenship report is the result of a ten month inquiry led by the New Citizenship Project with the Food Ethics Council, working with six organisations across the food system to explore a future ‘Citizen’ food system. It explores what could happen if the key players in the food system switched from a consumer to a citizen mindset, generating ideas and testing new approaches to food citizenship.