Volume 5 Issue 4, April 2024

The first instalment of the FAO food systems roadmap is a key step in identifying pathways to achieve zero hunger without breaching the 1.5 °C climate change threshold. But future instalments should be more methodologically transparent, emphasize the need to reduce animal-sourced food consumption and align with a holistic One Health approach.

Data-driven personalized nutrition (PN) can address the complexities of food systems in megacities, aiming to enhance food resilience. By integrating individual preferences, health data and environmental factors, PN can optimize food supply chains, promote healthier dietary choices and reduce food waste. Collaborative efforts among stakeholders are essential to implement PN effectively.

Hybrid intelligence — arising from the sensible, targeted fusion of human minds and cutting-edge computational systems — holds great potential for enhancing the sustainability of agriculture. Leveraging the combined strengths of both collective human and artificial intelligence helps identify and stress-test pathways towards the reconciliation of biodiversity and productivity.

A newly developed metasurface that is eco-friendly, non-toxic and water soluble facilitates the use of sensor-enabled food packaging.

Matching phosphorus fertilizer applications to optimal thresholds required by crops mitigates the exhaustion of phosphorus resources and promotes agricultural sustainability.

We found trade-offs among the environmental and animal welfare impacts of pig farms — those that had low greenhouse gas emissions typically had low land use but poor animal welfare and high antimicrobial use. Some farms performed well in all four impacts, but these farms were not consistently associated with any particular farm or label type.

Mouthfeel occurs at macro, cellular and molecular scales. Biophysical approaches, including atomic force microscopy, offer tools to explore the mechanisms of oral mechanosensation for informing food product development and outlining the definition of flavour.

The transition towards plant-based diets requires supportive market and policy instruments. This study investigates how and the extent to which public funds support animal agriculture by tracking subsidy flows related to the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy across global food supply chains.

Food packaging is an important environmental concern and susceptible to counterfeit-prone labelling. This study presents a newly developed water-soluble food label using nanocomposite ink that addresses these issues.

Neurotoxic methylmercury (MeHg) in rice poses health risks. This study explores the roles of various cropland microbial communities in MeHg formation on a large scale and identifies that Geobacteraceae are the key predictors of MeHg bioaccumulation in paddy soil systems, which holds the potential for mitigating global mercury exposure.

Greenhouse gas emissions, antimicrobial use, land use and animal welfare data representing most global commercial pig production systems show that no single system performs well across all measures, but trade-offs may be avoidable if mitigation measures are implemented within farming systems.

A lack of systematized information on existing agri-environmental policies poses challenges for research and practice. A new database with more than 6,000 agri-environmental policies implemented over the past six decades around the world helps fill the gap. This information enables the extraction of valuable insights for policymakers, academics and businesses.

Ongoing depletion rates of phosphorus reserves might pose a challenge to future food security. This Analysis estimates the effects of matching plant-available soil Olsen P concentrations with thresholds for optimal yields of grassland and 28 crops on the longevity of global P reserves.