In November 2009 the World Watch Institute released a report arguing that the FAO's estimate of livestock's total contribution to global GHG emissions (18%) is a serious underestimate and that the true footprint of livestock production is around 51% higher.

Belgian researchers have undertaken blind taste tests in which individuals are asked to rate the taste of a normal meat burger, a vegetarian burger and a burger made with mealworms.

The concept of food and nutrition security has evolved and risen to the top of the international policy agenda over the last decade. Yet it is a complex and multi-faceted issue, requiring a broad and inter-disciplinary perspective for full understanding. 

This report, Food Systems and Natural Resources”developed by the International Resource Panel (IRP) looks at the use and management of natural resources that go into the food system, the consequences of that management and the options to improve the efficiency with which they are managed. 

This paper published in Nature Plants finds that if tropical farming intensifies, major additions of phosphorus to soils will be needed

This paper discusses the water-energy-food nexus from a UK perspective with a focus on competing land demands.  The research, led by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, suggests that current UK policies on water, energy and food are too fragmented to effectively tackle global challenges. The paper argues that there is a need for cross-sectoral policies and for new research to focus on the nexus between sectors, scales and timeframes to address this challenge.

This column in Nature by Adam Briggs, public-health researcher at the University of Oxford, discusses the new UK sugar tax which the FCRN wrote about in our last newsletter.

Recent agri-food studies, including commodity systems, the political economy of agriculture, regional development, and wider examinations of the rural dimension in economic geography and rural sociology have been confronted by three challenges.