New Reports

8/19: Land is already under growing human pressure and climate change is adding to these pressures. At the same time, keeping global warming to well below 2ºC can be achieved only by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors including land and food, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this special report on climate change and land, the experts highlight that a transition towards sustainable land management and diets which help reduce emissions and pressure on land is required in order to feed the world in a changing climate. Sustainable land management options covered in the report include agroecology, agroforestry, conservation agriculture and forestry practices, crop and forest species diversity, appropriate crop and forest rotations, organic farming, integrated pest management, the conservation of pollinators and rain water harvesting. Read the Summary for Policymakers, the individual chapters or our piece of news.

7/19: Food systems and agriculture are at a crossroads and a profound transformation is needed at all scales, not only to achieve Sustainable Development Goal to “end hunger and all forms of malnutrition” by 2030 but also to address other goals of the Agenda 2030, including human and environmental health, climate change, equity and social stability. This is the message of a report published by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), the science-policy interface of the UN Committee on World Food Security. Current trends, such as the new increase in the number of undernourished people and the alarming rate of all forms of malnutrition will be exacerbated if we fail to design and implement food systems that ensure food security and nutrition while addressing all sustainability challenges, the experts warn. They argue that agroecological and other innovative approaches are increasingly praised for their potential contribution to reach these crucial goals and should be promoted in an integrated way. This report contains many recommendations aim at helping decision-makers design and implement concrete transition pathways towards more sustainable food systems. Read the summary, the full report or our piece of news.

2/19: A group of leading food experts have mapped out a vision for reforming European food systems in a new report launched in February. EU food and farming systems require a fundamental change of direction in order to address climate change, halt biodiversity loss, curb obesity, and make farming viable for the next generation, says the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). The expert panel proposes a “Common Food Policy”, a policy framework setting a direction for the whole food system, realigning the various sectoral policies that affect food production, processing, distribution, and consumption, and refocusing all actions on the transition to sustainability.
Read more or download the report.

1/19: Public health experts have called for a radical rethink of business models and food systems in order to tackle obesity, undernutrition and climate change. Governments must limit the political influence of powerful food and beverage corporations and prioritise the public good over commercial interests, according to a report published by The Lancet Commission on Obesity in January. The report, which is the result of a three-year project led by 26 experts from 14 countries, says that three pandemics – obesity, undernutrition, and climate change – constitute “The Global Syndemic”, with rising rates of obesity and greenhouse gas emissions, and stagnating rates of undernutrition. This syndemic “represents the paramount health challenge for humans, the environment, and our planet in the 21st century”. The authors argue that maligned economic incentives, lack of political leadership, and insufficient societal demand for change are preventing action. Read the Lancet Report and our piece of news which summarises the main messages.

6/18: The TEEB report evaluate the real costs and benefits – including environmental, health, and social impacts – of our agriculture and food systems. The authors argue that today’s food systems do not nourish and nurture people, society and the planet but are broken. Current patterns of production, processing, and consumption are generating large and unacceptable impacts on the health of the environment and humans, particularly on vulnerable populations. The problem is that eco-agri-food systems today are being viewed and evaluated through a narrow, incomplete and distorting lens called ‘per-hectare-productivity. To fix our broken food system, we must first fix food metrics. The authors argue that we need a ‘systems thinking’ approach, a robust and wide-angle lens to measure eco-agri-food system performance. We have to look at all the impacts of the value chain, from farm to fork to disposal, including effects on livelihoods, the environment, and health. Such a framework can help tackle the challenges currently faced by our global agriculture and food systems in achieving universal food security and reducing large impacts on climate, ecosystems, and environments. Read the synthesis or the full report.

10/17: Industrial food and farming systems are taking a heavy toll on human health and the environment, leading food experts have warned. According to a report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), decisive action needs to be taken to build healthier food systems. The report found that many of the severest health conditions afflicting populations around the world are linked to industrial food and farming practices, such as chemical-intensive agriculture, concentrated livestock production, the mass production and marketing of ultra-processed foods, and deregulated global supply chains. The food experts therefore urge a reform of food and farming systems in order to address the root causes of inequitable, unsustainable and unhealthy practices in food systems. Download the report here or read our piece of news.

6/16: The world needs a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems to protect human health and the environment, a group of leading food system experts has concluded. According to a report released by the IPES-Food panel in June 2016, input-intensive crop monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots must be consigned to the past in order to put global food systems onto sustainable footing. What is required is a fundamentally different model of agriculture based on diversifying farms and farming landscapes, replacing chemical inputs, optimizing biodiversity and stimulating interactions between different species, as part of holistic strategies to build long-term fertility, healthy agro-ecosystems and secure livelihoods, i.e. ‘diversified agroecological systems’. Download the report or read our short summary.

2/15: In 2009, a group of 29 scientists led by Johan Rockström published a groundbreaking article in the journal Nature titled “A safe operating space for humanity”. The scientists identified the nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the planet and proposed planetary boundaries for nine critical biophysical systems of the earth. If humanity exceeds these safe thresholds, there is the risk of abrupt or irreversible environmental changes, they warned. In 2015, an update was published in Science. The authors argue that the safe operating space for four of the nine systems has already been clearly exceeded, namely in the area of climate change, land-system change, human interference with the biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen) and, in particular, biodiversity loss and species extinctions. Read the Science article, our piece of news or visit the website of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

9/2013: A United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report published in 2013 calls for radical changes in agriculture and food production. Farming in rich and poor nations alike should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduced use of fertilizers and other inputs, greater support for small-scale farmers, and more locally focused production and consumption of food, the report recommends. The UN Trade and Environment Report 2013 warns that continuing rural poverty, persistent hunger around the world, growing populations, and mounting environmental concerns must be treated as a collective crisis. It says that urgent and far-reaching action is needed before climate change begins to cause major disruptions to agriculture, especially in developing countries. Almost 1 billion people currently suffer from hunger, and another 1 billion are malnourished, the report notes, even though current global agricultural production already provides sufficient calories to feed a population of 12 to 14 billion. Highest priority must be given to enabling the rural poor to become self-sufficient in food or to earn sufficient income through agriculture so that they can buy food. Download the report here

11/2011: In its Green Economy Report, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) outlines a transition towards a low carbon, resource-efficient global economy. The report is intended to serve as a basis for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). The main message is that greening the economy would lead to increased growth in economic terms and generate jobs, thus reducing poverty. According to the report investing just 2% of global GDP into ecological measures by 2050, including US$ 100-300 billion per year in green agriculture, could keep the atmospheric concentration of emissions below 450 ppm. It would also guarantee the availability of sufficient natural resources for a world population of 9 billion people. The first chapter of the report, which was coordinated by the IAASTD’s co-chair Hans Herren, is dedicated to the transition towards green agriculture. It repeats the main messages of the IAASTD and elaborates on some of these further.
Download the full report or the first chapter on agriculture.

10/2011. Deutsche Bank Research published two reports. The first focuses on the link between climate change and agriculture, the second on the increase in food prices. The research paper Mitigating Climate Change through Agriculture: An Untapped Potential estimates that agriculture, together with forestry, has the potential to mitigate climate change through an 18% reduction of total emissions. Climate-friendly agricultural practices, a shift towards climate-conscious consumption and reform of agricultural policies are all needed to fully unlock this potential.
The second report Where are Food Prices Heading? Short-term Drivers, Trends and Implications arrives at the conclusion that rising food prices pose a threat to food security, particularly for people in low-income countries. The report mainly attributes high food prices to supply and demand trends. It considers the role of speculation to be unclear¹, but admits that it can potentially amplify price spikes.

¹ With respect to this question, the reports arrives at entirely different conclusions to those reached in the report How Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and other Financial Institutions are Speculating with Food at the Expense of the Poorest, which was published at the same time by Foodwatch.

06/2011: The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published Save and Grow: A Policymaker’s Guide to the Sustainable Intensification of Smallholder Crop Production. The report presents a new paradigm called 'Sustainable Crop Production Intensification' (SCPI). The message of the publication is that “The present paradigm of intensive crop production cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium. In order to grow, agriculture must learn to save”. The challenge, especially in developing countries, is to produce greater yields from the same area of land whilst conserving resources and reducing negative impacts on the environment. SCPI is an attempt to find a compromise between conventional and sustainable agriculture. It can be seen as an attempt to outline the transition from industrial fossil-based agriculture and methods of the “Green Revolution”, towards agroecological principles and cultivation systems which place small-scale farmers at centre stage. It could also be interpreted as an approach to greenwash industrial intensification in agriculture.

04/2011: The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat completed the World Economic and Social Survey 2011 entitled The Great Green Technological Transformation. At the core of this great transformation is a comprehensive global energy transition and a reduction in the consumption of resources within a short time. The third chapter on agriculture suggests a “truly green revolution for food security”, which is closely based on the IAASTD’S recommendations for agroecology. According to the survey, new and old technologies exist that are known to ensure more sustainable farming and forestry management, but a great deal more innovation and knowledge sharing is needed to allow for their adaptation to local conditions. What is missing is the will to take action and widely distribute these technologies. The main author of the report and Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs is also serving as Secretary-General of the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

02/2011: The European Union’s Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) published its foresight report Sustainable Food Consumption and Production in a Resource-constrained World. Some of its programmatic conclusions go clearly beyond the IAASTD’s wording. The report calls for a paradigm shift from the dominant “productivity narrative” towards the “sufficiency narrative” to provide a more advantageous guiding narrative for future agriculture. The world food system is threatened by a complex mix of “scarcities”, including biophysical limits such as resource supply, and environmental limits such as pollution, as well as scarcities related to technological or social perspectives. Each of these scarcities could lead to conflict. Due to the interconnectedness of the combined scarcity challenges and the limited understanding of the feedback loops, science remains ill-prepared to deal with these challenges, and the future remains uncertain. The time needed to realise such a transition is also a scarce resource. The report recommends investment in farming systems “that take account of the interactions between productivity, environmental, economic and social sustainability goals”. These systems have to become more robust and resilient to ecological and economic crises. In order to achieve sustainable agriculture a “radical transformation of agricultural and food systems and of the knowledge and innovation system supporting them” is needed. The report is a slap in the face for the existing European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the focus of its research. In May, it was officially presented at a conference in Budapest. Here you can find the authors' presentation along with other speeches that were given.

01/2011: Questions determine the answers that are given. 55 leading agricultural scientists and nutritionists from 23 countries and leading institutions published a list of The Top 100 Questions of Importance to the Future of Global Agriculture. Over the course of a year, under the direction of Professor Jules Pretty, scientists worked on this paper and bargained over the questions. The aim was to use scientific evidence to lead policymakers to consider the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy support. The result can also be interpreted as an attempt to pave the way for consensus within the scientific community on the fact that a paradigm change is inevitable. The majority of the authors can also be found in The Future of Food and Farming.

01/2011: The Worldwatch Institute published the State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. It presents an overview of hundreds of simple and effective solutions to improve the food situation, as well as the efficiency and ecological adaptation of agriculture, particularly in developing countries. The State of the World report affirms agroecological knowledge as a solution that must be incorporated into government policies. It echoes the IAASTD’s proposals and speaks of local plant varieties and vertical gardens in slums; rain harvesting and the breeding of vegetables; the importance of trees and tricks to avoid harvest losses; farmer-led innovation in research and development; the power of women and innovation at community level. The report makes an illustrative and inspiring inventory. Ironically, the field studies were financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Only excerpts of the report are available for free, for example the articles Moving Ecoagriculture into the Mainstream and Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger. The Worldwatch blog Nourishing the Planet continues the debate on the topic.

01/2011: The UK Government Office for Science compiled the report The Future of Food and Farming. It offers a comprehensive and concise analysis of the current situation in the global food system and the foreseeable challenges it will face up to 2050, including an increasing demand for food, climate change, biodiversity loss and volatile food prices on the globalised markets. “Any one of these pressures would present substantial challenges to food security; together they constitute a major threat that requires a strategic reappraisal of how the world is fed” write the authors, which include leading opinion-makers from the international scientific community. They are regarded as the inventors of the term “sustainable intensification of agriculture”, which refers to an increase in production while drastically reducing the consumption of resources. The political recommendations of the report do not measure up to the quality of the analysis. However, despite the common preference for high-tech solutions and global free market economy, the report sees the future of food and agriculture primarily in the reduction of over-consumption. The future lies in changed consumption patterns, small but productive transformations at the local level, the knowledge of small-scale farmers and a substantial investment in agroecology. In 2009, a fairly similar group of scientists compiled the report Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture for the Royal Society, which could be described as a counter-report to the IAASTD, focusing heavily on the promises of new technologies. In this light, The Future of Food and Farming can be seen as the mainstream scientific community's first step in abandoning the paradigms of the past century.