Articles in 2024

A sweet gel from the endocarp of cocoa pods and the concentrated juice of the cocoa fruit pulp can replace sugar in a chocolate recipe, reducing the environmental impact associated with its production and improving the nutritional value of chocolate.

Food systems are responsible for around one-third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and dish-level emissions are detailed end-use representatives of demand-side emissions. Low-carbon food consumption strategies are therefore linked to the Paris Agreement targets and might determine their achievement.

Estimates of greenhouse gas emissions related to food consumption typically consider ingredients, rather than final dishes. This study combines over 500 real-life restaurant menu dishes with data on 170 million consumed meals in China, highlighting the potential of consumers to mitigate climate change through modifications in their eating patterns.

The conventional cocoa value chain has important environmental, nutritional and socio-economic implications. This study presents a chocolate formulation that combines the cocoa pod endocarp and pulp juice to create a sweetening gel that replaces refined sugar, offering improved nutritional value and reduced environmental impact while also contributing to income diversification for smallholder farmers.

With centralized production, the price of ammonia-based fertilizers is affected by the volatility of the fossil fuel market, complex supply chains and long-distance transportation costs. Now, an analysis of the cost-competitiveness of decentralized low-carbon ammonia production suggests that a substantial fraction of the global ammonia demand could be cost-competitively supplied by small-scale technologies by 2030.

We provide evidence that intensive industrialization over the past century, particularly of the livestock trade, has facilitated host jumps and accumulation of antimicrobial resistance genes in Salmonella enterica, leading to the global transmission of this pathogen from Europe and the USA during the height of pork production.

The production of ammonia-based nitrogen fertilizers, key to food production, is highly concentrated and therefore susceptible to price volatility and supply chain disruptions. This study examines the cost-competitiveness of a decentralized ammonia industry with low-carbon ammonia production using small modular technologies, such as electric Haber–Bosch or electrocatalytic reduction.

The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unprecedented in terms of the share of the population experiencing acute food insecurity and famine and the speed of the onset of the crisis. Research can help understand and anticipate the long-term impacts of the conflict on people and livelihoods, design more effective humanitarian support systems and identify options for creating resilient post-conflict livelihoods.

Linking spatially explicit inter-city nitrogen pollution transfer embedded in food trade to urbanization pathways and historic agricultural production trends reveals evidence of a ’pollution haven’ phenomenon in China’s Greater Bay Area, exacerbated by impeded agricultural development in less-urbanized surrounding cities.

The food system of urban agglomeration undergoes continuous transitions and poses changing pressure to the environment, especially in terms of nitrogen (N) pollution. This study highlights the decreased N use efficiency and intensified local N pollution in the context of uneven agricultural contraction in urban agglomeration and reveals how cities can leverage synergies for coordinated N pollution mitigation.

Society must revisit the currently dominant agricultural production model based on land expansion and intensification. Greenhouse cultivation represents a promising alternative, particularly in the Global South.

Estimates of the nutritional value of recreational inland fisheries highlight their importance for aquatic food access and vulnerability to climate change. Yet, communicating the importance of data-poor natural resource sectors remains challenging, particularly when defining sustainable development priorities.

Greenhouses are quickly proliferating in response to the world’s increasing demand for food, but information on their precise location, distribution and extent remains limited in many countries. This Analysis combines global very-high-resolution satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to address this knowledge gap, showing a dramatic increase in greenhouse coverage in the Global South.

Harvest from inland recreational fisheries are estimated, demonstrating the importance of this food source for nutrition and economic value in food systems that are vulnerable to climate change.

The intensification of livestock farming and related global trade are increasingly linked to the expansion of endemic bacterial pathogens, including zoonotic transfers to people. To preserve food security and public health, it is imperative to find measures that counter this trend.

Current narrow views of what constitutes evidence have left blind spots in food system decision-making. Yet, alternative ways of facilitating the production and exchange of transdisciplinary knowledge enable key lessons for more equitable and informed policy processes.

By analysing the genome of over 9,000 pig-associated isolates, this study shows that modernized agricultural systems have favoured the acquisition of antimicrobial resistance genes, population expansion and global transmission of pig-enriched Salmonella over the past century.

Management practices including augmenting the ratio of organic to chemical fertilizers, implementing deep application techniques and reintegrating straw into fields can bolster food production while optimizing resource use efficiency and abating nitrogen pollution in China.

Matching phosphorus fertilizer applications to optimal thresholds required by crops mitigates the exhaustion of phosphorus resources and promotes agricultural sustainability.