This 120-page report by the RUAF Foundation aims to provide suggestions for private sector actors in city regions’ food systems based on an extensive study of three cities. It presents knowledge on policy support mechanisms and identifies key lessons learned in the three case studies, which were conducted in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Quito, Ecuador; and Bristol, UK.

This new 712 page book in 28 chapters is edited by Rajeev Bhat. It addresses a very wide range of topics on agriculture, food and sustainability.

This book considers the main links between global conservation of the environment and food production.

In international trade agreements, restrictions on goods or demands for labelling which differ from country to country can be ‘barriers to trade’, effectively restricting the free movement of goods. Trade organisations which manage such agreements, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), have mechanisms in place to ensure that environmental or public health measures are not in fact ‘disguised restrictions on international trade’ which aim to protect national industries. Formal processes exist in the WTO to query public health and environment regulations for their ‘trade restrictiveness’, their necessity and the possibility of using alternatives.

The long awaited Working Group II report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Round  was released on March 31st 2014. This report details the impacts of climate change to date, the future risks from a changing climate, and the opportunities for effective action to reduce risks.

This article in Nature Scientific Reports details a new approach for generating skeletal muscle from pigs which can be used to make skeletal muscle – the main component of pork meat – in vitro. The techniques are potentially applicable to other types of muscle, such as heart muscle tissue, as well.

This paper provides an overview of dietary guidance for pulses, discussing their nutritional composition and health benefits as well as the evolution of the way in which the USDA’s dietary guidelines categorise pulses. The paper was published in a special issue on The Potential of Pulses to Meet Today’s Health Challenges: Staple Foods in the journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

This is a systematic review on consumer perception and behaviours in relation to meat, meat substitutes and the environment. It finds that both awareness of the environmental impact of meat consumption and a willingness to reduce meat consumption is low in the studied populations. The authors identify as a key research area the investigation of strategies that might help to motivate more moderate, sustainable meat consumption behaviour.

A newly revised edition of Tim Jackson’s important 2009 Prosperity without Growth has been published by Routledge. In it, Jackson aims to demonstrate that building a ‘post-growth’ economy is a precise, definable and meaningful task.