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Youth engagement in agriculture in low- and middle-income countries offers social and economic opportunities, and supports food security. Agriculture skills training is key for youth engagement, yet programmes are not well evaluated for effectiveness in employment outcomes.
To achieve sustainable food production in China in 2030, strategies such as optimizing fertilizer application, improving production efficiency, reducing food loss and waste and shifting dietary patterns must be combined inter-regionally, and food production reallocated from northern to southern China. Levers and barriers to strategy implementation are discussed here.
The yield variability of 18 crops, representing 70% of global crop area and two-thirds of global calorific intake, is assessed here at the country level for the impacts of weather (temperature and precipitation) and farm management practices (pesticide and fertilizer application, and irrigation).
The online food delivery and takeaway market is growing in China, serving 406 million customers with 10.0 billion orders in 2018. Here, data from an online food delivery platform, life-cycle environmental impacts of packaging and tableware waste generated across 353 cities in China, and scenarios for paper alternatives and tableware sharing are presented.
Placing vegetarian meals first on the counter has been proposed as a way of reducing meat consumption. Experimental studies involving 105,143 meal selections in two university cafeterias confirm this hypothesis, conditional on the physical distance between meal options.
Country-specific impacts of dietary transitions must be considered in climate change mitigation efforts. By modelling the trajectory of food, including international trade, this study reveals how greenhouse gas emissions of low-, middle- and high-income countries are expected to change with the adoption of the EAT–Lancet diet.
High-resolution meta-analysis of cheese microbiomes and corresponding volatilomes provide technological and ecological insights for improving cheese production.
The primary source of human exposure to the highly toxic heavy metal cadmium (Cd) is diet. This study identified a gene encoding a P-type heavy metal ATPase 3 (HvHMA3) that is responsible for Cd accumulation in barley grain. A Sukkula-like transposable element was found to play an important role in upregulating the expression of HvHMA3, thereby decreasing Cd accumulation in the grain.
Industrial insect production is expanding, particularly in regions where insects are not traditionally consumed, but food safety standards remain to be established. Here, potential microbiological contaminants from unprocessed insects are investigated, demonstrating a high risk for foodborne illnesses originating from bacterial spores, but low risk from viruses.
Principles of conservation agriculture are widely promoted for sustainable agricultural intensification, but their effects on crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa are poorly understood. A meta-analysis covering 16 countries quantifies such effects and reveals the conditions under which they are maximized.
Livestock greenhouse gas emissions are key to the sustainability of food systems. A spatially explicit analysis of global livestock supply chains shows large variability of nitrogen use efficiency across species, systems, production intensities and the origin and management of animal feed.
Urinary metabolic phenotyping of 1,848 adults in the United States shows that 46 structurally identified metabolites were influenced by intakes of 67 nutrients, and accurately predicted healthy and unhealthy dietary patterns. These urinary biomarkers are diet-derived, stable, measurable and associated with disease risk, thereby representing an advance on traditional ways of obtaining information about dietary patterns.
Variability in the individual response to dietary interventions has been reported. Here a Dietary Metabotype Score is developed to embody those interindividual responses by coupling data from highly controlled dietary studies with urinary metabolic phenotypes. This score may offer a method to target and to enhance dietary response at the individual level, thereby reducing the burden of diet-related disease at the population level.
Phosphorus cycling pathways and their ability to withstand disturbances are crucial to sustainable and sufficient food production. Ecological network analysis applied to a multi-node cycling network in China reveals the sensitivities and entry points for closing the phosphorus cycle.
Affordability of dietary patterns varies across countries, thereby affecting the levels of animal- and plant-based foods required to satisfy nutritional demands. Using an optimization model, Chungchunlam et al. reveal the components of the least-cost nutritious diet in the United States.
Fatalities from consuming alcoholic drinks accidentally—or intentionally—contaminated with methanol pose a serious public health problem, especially in Asia. Here, a smartphone app paired with a portable testing device is presented, enabling quick and accurate methanol quantification for consumers, beverage manufacturers, law-enforcement agencies and healthcare workers.
Food pantries are part of the emergency food network in the United States, but they are an understudied component of food access. The Pantry Accessibility Index and Individual Accessibility Index developed here allow measurement of the spatiotemporal availability of these services to the food insecure of south-central Indiana.
Novel aquaculture feeds are rapidly developing, but their contributions to sustainable industry growth are unknown. Cottrell et al. model feed efficiency and fatty acid profiles, showing that replacing forage fish with novel feed ingredients could strengthen aquaculture’s role in global food security.
Food safety is jeopardized by the global trade in contaminated foods. Huang et al. demonstrate how consumer exposure to the toxic chemical polychlorinated biphenyl-153 (PCB-153) can be modelled and identify regions with high consumer PCB-153 exposure resulting from imported fish consumption.
A ‘foodshed’ model indicates the minimum distance between crop production and consumption globally. Results show that most of the world’s population depends on trade to feed themselves, even under different levels of yield gap closure and food loss reduction.