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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 Magnaporthoryzae 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%.
Most research on the impacts of food loss and waste (FLW) looks at food security, resource use and climate. Based on product-level FLW data and an NH3 emission inventory, atmospheric chemistry simulations reveal the potential of FLW reductions in mitigating PM2.5 air pollution and nitrogen deposition.
Imports and exports of agricultural goods change the distribution and flow of nutrients around the world. This study calculates trade-related phosphorus (P) resource savings and waste for 1961–2019, exploring options to improve global P use efficiency.
Global wheat trade data for 2022 show substantial disparities in how different countries altered their trade network and diversified import sources in response to Ukrainian wheat shortages.
The consumption of animal-sourced foods increases food–feed competition for scarce cropland. A scenario analysis reveals how increased use of low-opportunity-cost feed products in animal feeding in China can reduce the impacts of livestock production on land, irrigation water, synthetic fertilizer use and greenhouse gas emissions.
Malnutrition at both low and high levels of calorie consumption is a major global health challenge. Using a fully integrated framework, this study reports that healthier diets and reduced food waste improves both undernutrition and obesity outcomes while reducing pressure on environmental resources by 2050.
The elimination of forced labour (Sustainable Development Goal 8.7) is a priority for the sustainability of food systems. Using data on production, trade, labour intensity and risk, this study estimates the risk of forced labour embedded in the US land-based food supply across product category, country of origin and supply chain stage.
Modelled estimates of the environmental impact of dietary choices often fail to reflect true dietary practice. This study links a dietary dataset from 55,000 UK consumers with food-level data on GHG emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication and biodiversity to compare the environmental burden of different levels of meat consumption.
The disruption of hubs connecting production, processing and consumption locations may seriously impact agri-food supply-chain networks and affect food security. Using complex network statistics, this study identifies structural chokepoints that accumulate agri-food commodities from their production regions to be further processed and redistributed to final consumption points across the United States.
Efficiency improvements that cause price decreases and consumption increases may offset the benefits of avoided food loss and waste (FLW), hindering progress towards SDG 12. Based on published income-group- and food-type-specific price elasticities of supply and demand, this study quantifies the direct rebound effects from large reductions in FLW of six types of food.