Articles in 2020

Policy packaging offers citizens better scope for assessing trade-offs in policy attributes and policymakers the opportunity to make unpopular reforms, including those needed to achieve healthy and sustainable food system transformation, more palatable to their constituents.

Many cities have enough space to satisfy their population’s demand for fruits and vegetables. A conceptual framework based on the city of Sheffield, United Kingdom, highlights key challenges and opportunities for the realization of untapped urban horticultural potential.

Over the past two millennia, dietary transitions among foragers in southern Africa have impacted their height, family size, disease rates, and nutrition. The shift to a sedentary life has brought with it a range of health and social issues. Yet, foraging remains important for food security and has unique cultural value.

Policy packages for reducing the environmental impact of food systems were tested for acceptability through conjoint experiments in China, Germany and the United States. Achieving a sustainable food system may involve unpopular measures, but strategic policy bundling may increase citizen support for these measures.

Livestock products are under scrutiny from environmental, human health and animal welfare perspectives. Future policy decisions must address and represent the complexity of the interactions between livestock and the Sustainable Development Goals, and beyond.

Historical and projected impacts of tropospheric ozone and climate change on California’s most valuable perennial crops indicate that opportunities exist to improve crop yields through pollution mitigation.

Perennial crops such as fruits and nuts, important to dietary diversity and nutrition, represent almost 40% of California’s agriculture by economic value. Here, the impacts of climate change and ozone on historical and future yields of perennial crops in California are assessed.

The continuing loss of ecosystems, species and intraspecific genetic diversity has profound implications for agriculture, food security and human wellbeing. An urgent response is needed, including at global level.

Transforming the food system for human and planetary health must support the livelihoods and well-being of those working in the agri-food sector.

Transgenic rice engineered to increase photosynthetic activity through overproduction of ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase–oxygenase (Rubisco) shows increased rice yields, with improved nitrogen-use efficiency, in an experimental paddy field.

A food system framework breaks down entrenched sectoral categories and existing adaptation and mitigation silos, presenting novel ways of assessing and enabling integrated climate change solutions from production to consumption.

Popular ideas about the Mediterranean diet are reviewed and questioned with respect to regional data on food intake and cultural diversity. With the UNESCO declaration of the Mediterranean diet as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, a far more holistic approach to food habits and environmental patterns has been developed.

An engineered increase in Rubisco production has increased photosynthetic capacity, rice yield and nitrogen use efficiency in an experimental paddy field. This demonstrates a key means to sustainably increasing yield and global food security.

To highlight vulnerabilities of future food production under climate change, we need a better understanding of crop yield variability drivers. Soil moisture, which plays interdependent roles in water demand and supply, determined from satellite observations can markedly improve the predictive skill of US maize yield models.

Understanding the response of agriculture to heat and moisture stress is essential to adapt food systems under climate change. Using newly available satellite soil moisture data, this study finds that the combined influence of soil moisture and atmospheric evaporative demand is important for accurately predicting US maize yields.