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Video recordings of the talks from the City Food Symposium of December 2014, hosted by City University London, are now available online. You will find downloadable files of the speakers’ presentations on the City University London website.
This article highlights one of the approaches the dairy industry is taking to create new markets for dairy consumption.
This article from the Urbanist takes a look at Japan’s indoor farming is portrayed. The successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan is shown through some staggering statistics: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.
The next version of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seem likely to include advice on sustainable diets. Preliminary conclusions from a subcommittee on food sustainability and safety indicate that the message of how the food is produced will be included in the final recommendations. For more on these subcommittee discussions read an article in Science here.
Read more a bout the dietary guidelines here.
You can also find more information on our website about other dietary guidelines and food policy.
The Guardian recently hosted a live chat where a panel of experts joined readers online to discuss the future of sustainable agriculture in the face of changing weather driven by climate change and increasing competition for food. This article discusses 10 points that were discussed by participats.
Read the full article here.
A top China government advisor said at a recent Beijing conference that China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter will limit its total emissions for the first time by the end of this decade. The Chair of China's Advisory Committee on Climate Change said that an absolute cap on emissions will be introduced sometime within the next five years. Although the advisor later stated that these were only his own opinions, commentators expressed a cautious optimism about the statement.
A summary of a discussion on sustainable diets, hosted by the Guardian, is now available on their website. It sought to take a holistic approach to the interlinked issues of food, farming, environment and health, focusing on the issues of how a sustainable diet should be defined and achieved.
Discussants included Jo Confino (Chair) Executive editor, the Guardian, Tim Lang Professor of Food Policy, City of London and David Nussbaum Chief executive, WWF, Tim Smith Group quality director, Tesco.
You can read the summary here. See also FCRN discussion papers focusing on what a sustainable healthy diet is and how it can be achieved.
This interesting article, published by the International Leather Maker magazine takes a look at the often neglected non food-outputs of the livestock system, focusing in particular on leather.
In this interview journalist Tom Levitt discusses with Barry Popkin, coordinator of the China Health and Nutrition Survey, how Chinese diets have shifted in recent years and what this means in terms of public health and environmental impacts.
This blog-post in The Economist, written by Sir Gordon Conway and Katy Wilson, describes their views on sustainable intensification. They argue that, to ensure food security in ways that maximise both agricultural output and the health of the environment and ecosystem, we need to redesign our innovation systems to aid multidisciplinary and collaborative research.
This is the first time that Korean foods are listed in the Ark of Taste, an international slow-food catalogue showing foods that are in danger of extinction. The new foods include seasoned beans, dwarf wheat, wild fowl, Hanson Lily and beef from cows raised on medicinal herbs. The listing is part of an attempt to highlight the risk of extinction of these foods and encourage people to protect them.
The debate on land sharing versus land sparing is ongoing and we addressed the issue somewhat in our Agroforestry interview a while back. This blog post by journalist and author Fred Pearce highlights some of the recent years’ debate and presents evidence from various parts of the world, either in favor of sparing or sharing land.
Good to know the Brits are tops at something. To read the full story click here.
The UK’s Daily Mail reports that the UK supermarket Tesco will monitor the healthiness of its customers’ food purchases using Clubcard data and then use that data to suggest ways in which people could make healthier choices. Although plans are still in the early stages options considered so far include offering vouchers for healthier products and promoting a better diet via suggested recipes.
Due to Nepal’s large energy deficit where supply shortfalls and interrupted power affect both household and the national industry, the country is now looking for energy alternatives such as using its growing urban and industrial waste.
A new 90,000-square-foot indoor farm called FarmedHere has recently opened in Chicago and is expected to produce 1 million pounds a year of organic greens like basil, lettuce, mint, and spinach. It is also expected that it will provide hundreds of local jobs.
Bill Gates seems to have entered into the meat question. In his view it is simply not possible to feed 9 billion people on a high meat diet and the way forward is therefore the development of artificial meat and eggs.
The Norwegian pension fund GPFG, the largest in the world and worth US$710 billion, has pulled out of 23 palm oil companies in Indonesia and Malaysia which it judged to unsustainable. GPFG’s investments in the palm oil industry are now reduced by more than 40 per cent.
FCRN member David Freudberg, host of the National Public Radio series “Humankind,” has written a blog for The Huffington Post arguing that diet is rarely discussed as a way to mitigate climate change. He notes that the recommendations being made by climate scientists on how to lessen our carbon footprint are also the same as those being made by health experts – diets higher in fruits, vegetables, and grains, and lower in meat.