Articles

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.

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.

An illustrative, feedback-oriented conceptual framework is presented, emphasizing the processes that could result in a sugar-sweetened beverage tax being increased, maintained, eroded or repealed over time.

A large share of all food produced for human consumption is internationally traded, including foods with important public health implications such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and red meat. Using bilateral trade data and food-specific risk–disease relationships, this study estimates the impact of food imports on diet-related health effects per country.

Stratospheric aerosol interventions, or the injection of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, may be a promising strategy to fight the effects of global warming. This study looks at the output from 11 different stratospheric aerosol intervention scenarios based on an Earth system model coupled to a crop model to analyse impacts on maize, rice, soybean and wheat production.

Understanding plant–microbe–soil interactions enables the design of effective solutions for agriculture under suboptimal conditions. This study reports the identification of aluminium-resistant bacteria and their potential contribution to increased rice yields in acidic soils.

Taxes are increasingly used to disincentivize the consumption of specific food products associated with negative impacts for health and the environment. This study compares the distributional effects of different tax designs and revenue recycling mechanisms for taxing meat products across the European Union and United Kingdom.

Data from 78 countries and 14 case studies, disaggregated by employment, subsistence and gender along the aquatic food supply chain, are used to estimate the number of livelihoods supported by small-scale fisheries.

Food waste is a global challenge that is strongly linked to climate change, resource consumption and human health. This study proposes a monetization approach based on a set of life-cycle assessment indicators that enables the comparison of food waste recycling technologies. The method was applied to food waste recycling in a Chinese province, revealing trade-offs and the effectiveness of different solutions.

An ecological footprint approach demonstrates that EU-27 residents demand more from nature than the region’s ecosystems can regenerate, with a quarter of biocapacity for food originating outside of the region.

Agricultural diversification can enhance ecosystem services, provide socio-economic benefits and increase yields in major cropping systems. This study synthesizes research about the effects of agricultural diversification on global rice production and shows that diversification can increase biodiversity by 40%, improve economy by 26% and reduce crop damage by 31%.

Data from integrated aquaculture–agriculture farms in Bangladesh indicate that the production of specific combinations of aquatic foods and vegetables can simultaneously improve nutrient and economic productivity and promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture.

China is the global hotspot of ammonia emissions from croplands, with adverse impacts on human health and the environment. Reporting on a large-scale ammonia reduction trial at the county level in the North Plain China, this study shows that coordinated actions among smallholders can ensure high yields and improved air quality.

Rice blast disease caused by Magnaporth oryzae is one of the most devastating diseases to threaten sustainable rice production. This study reveals that OsUBC45, encoding a ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme, may be useful in improving disease resistance. Overexpression of OsUBC45 enhances resistance to both the blast disease and bacterial leaf blight, while also resulting in a significant increase in grain yield of over 10%.

This study presents a panel-data analysis of 33 middle-income countries over 2000–2019 and reveals that increases in real food prices have reduced poverty in more agrarian economies but seemed to have little or no impact on aggregate poverty in more urbanized economies. Short-run agricultural supply responses emerge as a key mechanism by which higher food prices could reduce poverty in specific contexts.

A data mining and machine learning approach for improving surveillance reveals clinically relevant antimicrobial resistance profiles across chicken farms, abattoirs and environments in three provinces in China.

The sense of taste plays a major role in the identification and analysis of liquid food types. This study reports a droplet-based, self-powered triboelectric taste-sensing system that integrates two taste-sensing units. Combined with deep-learning data analytics and image recognition, the systems can achieve liquid recognition accuracy of up to 96.0%.