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The coupled impacts of diets on health and the environment must be considered when setting food policy targets and evaluating the effectiveness of specific interventions. A newly proposed health–environment efficiency indicator applied to 195 countries over two decades can aid this process, revealing important trends and drivers.
A database addresses the magnitude, composition, location and environmental footprint of global food loss and waste, providing a link to global trade, nutritional security and environmental impacts.
The patterns of how yield gaps change can suggest likely future outcomes for crop growth. This study conducts a spatial and temporal analysis of yield gaps for ten major crops from 1975 to 2010 and identifies regions where crops are experiencing ‘ceiling pressure’, signalling opportunities to improve future food security.
A natural pathway in rice and in seven other major crop species degrades 57–89% of accumulated methylmercury and releases Hg into the air. The MeHg demethylation within rice mitigates Hg flux into human food webs, diminishing human cognitive damage and generating global economic benefits of US$30.7–84.2 billion.
Protein production and consumption changes are needed to support healthy and sustainable food transformations. This systematic review explores narratives, gaps in the literature and paths forwards by focusing on the protein shift as a transition process in high-income countries.
This study analyses the synergistic effects of reductions in ozone and aerosols on China’s maize, rice and wheat yields, showing that meeting air quality targets would help the country to achieve grain self-sufficiency.
Effective solutions for food systems transformation must be designed in a participatory way. This study illustrates the application of an integrated assessment framework to explore stakeholder-driven scenarios towards climate-smart nutrition security in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
A trans-disciplinary framework shows how collaborative engagement and multi-phase development pathways can aid scaling up urban agriculture to transform food systems and support robust urban resilience and sustainability.
While nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles have been investigated separately, the links between them are key for sustainable food systems. Combining material flow and ecological network analysis, this study examines the resilience of China’s N–P-coupled cycling network over time under different scenarios.
Optimizing agricultural management practices has the potential to support sustainable agricultural intensification. This study presents a hybrid data-model integration approach that enables spatiotemporal optimization of agricultural management practices to maximize crop yield while reducing resource use and greenhouse gas emissions.
Holistic indicator frameworks are needed to track food systems transformation. This Analysis shows the application of a framework recently developed by the Food Systems Countdown Initiative to all UN member states, revealing current status, data gaps and priority actions.
Data on aquatic food loss and waste are limited outside small-scale fisheries, and major gaps exist for aquaculture species that make up half of global production. This study estimates loss and waste in the US aquatic food supply chain from 2014 to 2018, including the top ten species groups that together represent 89% of the country’s aquatic food supply.
Understanding the general responses of soil gross N cycling to commonly used knowledge-based N management practices on a global scale could help predict ecosystem N retention capacity and subsequent N losses. This global meta-analysis provides evidence for different responses of soil N cycling rates and N losses and associated soil properties to various knowledge-based N management practices.
Livestock feed production competes directly or indirectly with food crops for natural resources. This study demonstrates that more efficient use of food system by-products in livestock diet can reduce feed–food competition, increase the global food supply and decrease the pressure on land and water resources.
A scenario analysis shows that disregarding the links between bovine milk and meat production could lead to imbalances between national dietary guidelines and production outcomes, leading to unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions and potentially to food waste.
The UK Government aims to reduce premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by one-third by 2030 (SDG 3). Using life table methodology and data from the UK Biobank, this study indicates that sustained dietary changes—from median or unhealthy to a longevity-associated dietary pattern or to the Eatwell Guide recommendations—could lead to substantial life expectancy gains.
The relationships between the use of agricultural inputs and crop yields are complex. This study presents a machine learning model to predict the changes in crop yield in the face of single and combined agricultural input shocks and shows that shocks in the availability of commercial agricultural inputs have a considerable impact on crop yields, particularly in high-yield regions worldwide.
Storage and processing can impact micronutrient levels of biofortified foods at the point of consumption. A systematic review and online dashboard present data on how processing methods affect micronutrient retention.
Plant-beneficial bacteria provide multiple benefits to plants. This study constructs a database to couple microbial taxonomy with their plant-beneficial traits, and predicts that fossil-fuel-dependent scenarios could potentially lead to a marked decline of plant-beneficial bacteria abundance in global soils.
Dietary shifts can be hard to implement and their impacts can differ across population groups. Using dietary intake data from more than 7,000 US children and adults, this study identifies relatively simple dietary substitutions from higher- to lower-carbon foods, estimating the impact of these substitutions on greenhouse gas emissions and overall dietary healthfulness.