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Cropland fragmentation poses a significant threat to agricultural sustainability in China. Rational crop layout is required for different ecological regions to manage the fragmented croplands.
Wild forage fish can provide nutrients essential for human health, yet some nutrients may be lost when forage fish are used as aquafeeds. Reallocating a third of food-grade forage fish towards direct human consumption can optimize seafood systems to deliver dietary nutrients for feed and food at different scales.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the affordability of a healthy diet remains a pressing concern, recent research offers fresh insights into how food prices and income influence dietary quality. These insights provide a roadmap for targeted food and nutrition policy interventions.
Ambient temperature increases occurring under climate change could induce livestock heat stress, resulting in lambing losses and an estimated economic burden of up to Australian $166 million per annum to the Australian sheep industry.
Food systems are complex and actions in one area are likely to have ripple effects in others. A newly proposed efficiency metric shows how well environmental resources used (and degraded) by food systems contribute to diet-related health outcomes.
An assessment of the supply chain reveals a rising trend in global food loss and waste, with uneven distribution across regions. Integrated interventions are necessary to reduce food waste and improve nutritional and environmental security.
The protein transition seeks to mitigate the adverse impacts of production and consumption of animal-sourced foods. Three diverse but partially overlapping narratives emerge from the scientific literature, addressing drivers of change, actionable pathways and visions for the future.
In vivo mercury demethylation by rice plants, involving neither light nor microorganisms, has major implications for human health and possibly even global mercury cycling.
Material flow and ecological network analysis of China’s coupled nitrogen and phosphorus flows shows trade-offs and synergies between food and energy systems.
Redesigning crop management practices for climate, crop and soil co-optimization has great potential to maintain high yields, mitigate social and environmental impacts, and support sustainable agricultural intensification.
The application of an integrated assessment framework in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates how anticipatory governance and decision support tools can help inform policy-making at the national level in the face of looming climate and nutrition crises.
In the runup to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, global progress on nutritional security and environmental sustainability has slowed. A new framework aims to help countries accelerate their ambitions, allowing them to set and monitor targets across food systems.
Increasing nitrogen (N) fertilization does not proportionally increase crop production. The integrative application of knowledge-based N management by synchronizing crop N demand with N supply is effective for enhancing crop N uptake while reducing its losses to the environment.
If people with unhealthy or typical dietary patterns in the UK were to follow the Eatwell Guide recommendations or longevity-associated dietary patterns, they would likely see substantial gains in life expectancy.
A database reveals global patterns of the abundance and diversity of bacteria beneficial to plants and predicts that these vital bacteria may be threatened by future climate change. Such information is critical to sustainably address and safeguard the globe’s growing agricultural demands.
Simple dietary changes could cut carbon footprints, but the impact on other aspects of environmental sustainability and nutrition must be carefully considered.
Public health policies can have implications beyond their intended outcomes. A causal-loop diagram for sugar-sweetened beverage taxes was developed using a systems-thinking approach, emphasizing the trajectory of different outcomes over time.
With a better understanding of the soil microbiome and its interactions with plants, designing a synthetic bacterial community may complement current agricultural practices to enhance plant performance on marginal soils.
