News & Views

Substituting animal-source foods with novel and future foods in our daily diets is essential to mitigate global environmental change. An integrated statistical approach and optimization model support a shift to alternative, more sustainable diets.

Tillage intensity is increasing across the US corn–soybean cropping systems due to increased weed resistance. The more intensive tillage regimes are likely to have negative impacts on greenhouse gas emissions from soils.

An analysis of historical Escherichia coli samples from livestock reveals how antimicrobial resistance can spread — and how understanding the biology underlying its spread can inform effective policy actions.

Trade-offs between land-based climate change mitigation efforts and food security are common to most decarbonization scenarios. Accounting for climate impacts and inclusive policy design can reverse this trend.

Chemical and pathogenic hazards in aquaculture supply chains threaten the provision of safe aquatic food. The Seafood Risk Tool is an integrated, semi-quantitative system that develops bespoke supply chain and risk management strategies.

Relocating livestock closer to croplands could increase opportunities for manure recycling and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizer — facilitating nitrogen pollution abatement and reducing the impacts of nitrogen pollution on human health.

Animal-derived serum use in culture media is a financial, ethical and sustainability challenge for scaling up cultured meat production. Now, an omics approach has identified key cellular signals that allow myocytes to develop in the absence of animal serum.

Feeding animals with low-opportunity-cost biomass — a principle of circular agriculture — may upgrade the role of cattle and pigs in sustainable and healthy food systems, as represented by the EAT–Lancet dietary recommendations.

An anticipatory life-cycle assessment of industrial-scale ovalbumin production using Trichoderma reesei culture indicates that this cellular agriculture approach could have lower global warming potential than ovalbumin purified from egg whites.

Social disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic triggered highly varied changes in diet and lifestyle. It has offered a unique opportunity to study drivers of behaviour change in the general population, building the crucial evidence base needed to tackle major challenges for transforming food systems.

The merging of small farms into fewer large ones is a key part of China’s food security and rural revitalization strategy. Yet, the benefits of implementing large-scale farms vary under different land consolidation pathways.

Armed conflicts have devastating humanitarian consequences, both direct and indirect. A crucial yet overlooked outcome is the disruption of local agricultural production and the consequent erosion of food security in war-ridden regions.

GWP* is an alternative emission metric that better represents the short-lived character of methane, but its application is not straightforward and can have a substantial impact on the design of mitigation policies in agriculture.

Coupling micro- and nanotechnology-based diagnostics devices with machine learning would bring advantages in the food and agriculture sectors that will positively impact our planet.

A new dataset that comprises more than 5,500 historical crop pest and disease records in China provides a unique opportunity to understand how climate affects crop pest and disease outbreaks.

Developing new modelling tools to support better design of climate change adaptation strategies offers an opportunity to harmonize crop production, climate change mitigation and environmental sustainability.

Sensitivity of US dairy production to extreme cold and heat has diminished over recent decades in large part due to improvements in management, breeding and technology. These adaptations have benefited milk yield by reducing the vulnerability of dairy production to cold and heat stress.

Adopting new models for sustainable and profitable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa requires a comprehensive evaluation of fertilizer use in terms of agronomic performance, economic implications, the integration of crops and livestock, and policy recommendations.

Projected decreases in maize and soy yields due to global warming are compounded by changing co-variability between surface water fluxes and temperature. Precipitation and evapotranspiration need to be accounted for when adapting agriculture and agricultural practices for climate change.

Labour exploitation in the agrifood sector must be addressed for sustainability. Data-driven methodologies can identify risk hotspots and facilitate development of mitigation strategies.