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This Analysis presents a recently developed food system indicator framework and holistic monitoring architecture to track food system transformation towards global development, health and sustainability goals. Five themes are considered: (1) diets, nutrition and health; (2) environment, natural resources and production; (3) livelihoods, poverty and equity; (4) governance; and (5) resilience. Each theme is divided into three to five indicator domains, and indicators were selected to reflect each domain through a consultative process. In total, 50 indicators were selected, with at least one indicator available for every domain. Harmonized data of these 50 indicators provide a baseline assessment of the world's food systems. We show that every country can claim positive outcomes in some parts of food systems, but none are among the highest ranked across all domains. Furthermore, some indicators are independent of national income, and each highlights a specific aspiration for healthy, sustainable and just food systems. The Food Systems Countdown Initiative will track food systems annually to 2030, amending the framework as new indicators or better data emerge., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Feeding 9-10 billion people by 2050 and preventing dangerous climate change are two of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Both challenges must be met while reducing the impact of land management on ecosystem services that deliver vital goods and services, and support human health and well-being. Few studies to date have considered the interactions between these challenges. In this study we briefly outline the challenges, review the supply- and demand-side climate mitigation potential available in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use AFOLU sector and options for delivering food security. We briefly outline some of the synergies and trade-offs afforded by mitigation practices, before presenting an assessment of the mitigation potential possible in the AFOLU sector under possible future scenarios in which demand-side measures codeliver to aid food security. We conclude that while supply-side mitigation measures, such as changes in land management, might either enhance or negatively impact food security, demand-side mitigation measures, such as reduced waste or demand for livestock products, should benefit both food security and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. Demand-side measures offer a greater potential (1.5-15.6 Gt CO2 -eq. yr(-1) ) in meeting both challenges than do supply-side measures (1.5-4.3 Gt CO2 -eq. yr(-1) at carbon prices between 20 and 100 US$ tCO2 -eq. yr(-1) ), but given the enormity of challenges, all options need to be considered. Supply-side measures should be implemented immediately, focussing on those that allow the production of more agricultural product per unit of input. For demand-side measures, given the difficulties in their implementation and lag in their effectiveness, policy should be introduced quickly, and should aim to codeliver to other policy agenda, such as improving environmental quality or improving dietary health. These problems facing humanity in the 21st Century are extremely challenging, and policy that addresses multiple objectives is required now more than ever., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

This article reviews the potential impacts of climate change on food security. It is found that of the four main elements of food security, i.e., availability, stability, utilization, and access, only the first is routinely addressed in simulation studies. To this end, published results indicate that the impacts of climate change are significant, however, with a wide projected range (between 5 million and 170 million additional people at risk of hunger by 2080) strongly depending on assumed socio-economic development. The likely impacts of climate change on the other important dimensions of food security are discussed qualitatively, indicating the potential for further negative impacts beyond those currently assessed with models. Finally, strengths and weaknesses of current assessment studies are discussed, suggesting improvements and proposing avenues for new analyses.

A comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change on agro-ecosystems over this century is developed, up to 2080 and at a global level, albeit with significant regional detail. To this end an integrated ecological-economic modelling framework is employed, encompassing climate scenarios, agro-ecological zoning information, socio-economic drivers, as well as world food trade dynamics. Specifically, global simulations are performed using the FAO/IIASA agro-ecological zone model, in conjunction with IIASAs global food system model, using climate variables from five different general circulation models, under four different socio-economic scenarios from the intergovernmental panel on climate change. First, impacts of different scenarios of climate change on bio-physical soil and crop growth determinants of yield are evaluated on a 5' X 5' latitude/longitude global grid; second, the extent of potential agricultural land and related potential crop production is computed. The detailed bio-physical results are then fed into an economic analysis, to assess how climate impacts may interact with alternative development pathways, and key trends expected over this century for food demand and production, and trade, as well as key composite indices such as risk of hunger and malnutrition, are computed. This modelling approach connects the relevant bio-physical and socio-economic variables within a unified and coherent framework to produce a global assessment of food production and security under climate change. The results from the study suggest that critical impact asymmetries due to both climate and socio-economic structures may deepen current production and consumption gaps between developed and developing world; it is suggested that adaptation of agricultural techniques will be central to limit potential damages under climate change.

The combustion of woodfuel for residential use is often not considered to be a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in households since emissions from woodfuel combustion can be offset by the CO2 absorbed by the growth of the forest as a carbon sink (IPCC, 2006). However, this only applies to wood that is harvested in a renewable way, i.e., at a rate not exceeding the regrowth rate of the forest from which it is harvested (Drigo et al., 2002). This paper estimates the share of GHG emissions attributable to non-renewable woodfuel harvesting for use in residential food activities. It adds to a growing research base estimating GHG emissions from across the entire agri-food value chain, from the manufacture of farm inputs, through food supply chains, and finally to waste disposal (Tubiello et al., 2021). Country-level information is generated from United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and International Energy Agency (IEA) data on woodfuel use in households. We find that, in 2019, annual emissions from non-renewable woodfuel use in household food consumption were about 745 million tonnes (Mt CO2eq yr-1), with uncertainty ranging from -20 % to + 22 %, having increased 6% from 1990. Overall, global trends were a result of counterbalancing effects: the emission increases were largely fuelled from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia, and Latin America while significant decreases were seen in countries in Eastern Asia and South-eastern Asia. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has developed and regularly maintains a database covering GHG emissions from the various components of the agri-food sector, including pre- and post-production activities, by country and world regions. The dataset is developed according to International Panel on Climate Change guidelines (IPCC, 2006), which avoids overlaps across AFOLU and energy components. It relies mainly on UNSD Energy Statistics data, which are used as activity data for the calculation of the GHG emissions (Tubiello et al., 2022). The information used in this work is available as open data with DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7310932 (Flammini et al., 2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present results from the FAOSTAT agri-food systems emissions database, relative to 236 countries and territories and over the period 1990-2019. We find that in 2019, world-total food systems emissions were 16.5 billion metric tonnes (Gt CO2eq yr-1), corresponding to 31 % of total anthropogenic emissions. Of the agri-food systems total, global emissions within the farm gate -from crop and livestock production processes including on-farm energy use--were 7.2 Gt CO2eq yr-1; emissions from land use change, due to deforestation and peatland degradation, were 3.5 Gt CO2eq yr-1; and emissions from pre- and post-production processes -manufacturing of fertilizers, food processing, packaging, transport, retail, household consumption and food waste disposal--were 5.8 Gt CO2eq yr-1. Over the study period 1990-2019, agri-food systems emissions increased in total by 17 %, largely driven by a doubling of emissions from pre- and post-production processes. Conversely, the FAO data show that since 1990 land use emissions decreased by 25 %, while emissions within the farm gate increased only 9 %. In 2019, in terms of single GHG, pre- and post-production processes emitted the most CO2 (3.9 Gt CO2 yr-1), preceding land use change (3.3 Gt CO2 yr-1) and farm-gate (1.2 Gt CO2 yr-1) emissions. Conversely, farm-gate activities were by far the major emitter of methane (140 Mt CH4 yr-1) and of nitrous oxide (7.8 Mt N2O yr-1). Pre-and post-processes were also significant emitters of methane (49 Mt CH4 yr-1), mostly generated from the decay of solid food waste in landfills and open-dumps. The most important trend over the 30-year period since 1990 highlighted by our analysis is the increasingly important role of food-related emissions generated outside of agricultural land, in pre- and post-production processes along food supply chains, at all scales from global, regional and national, from 1990 to 2019. In fact, our data show that by 2019, food supply chains had overtaken farm-gate processes to become the largest GHG component of agri-food systems emissions in Annex I parties (2.2 Gt CO2eq yr-1). They also more than doubled in non-Annex I parties (to 3.5 Gt CO2eq yr-1), becoming larger than emissions from land-use change. By 2019 food supply chains had become the largest agri-food system component in China (1100 Mt CO2eq yr-1); USA (700 Mt CO2eq yr-1) and EU-27 (600 Mt CO2eq yr-1). This has important repercussions for food-relevant national mitigation strategies, considering that until recently these have focused mainly on reductions of non-CO2 gases within the farm gate and on CO2 mitigation from land use change. The information used in this work is available as open data at: https://zenodo.org/record/5615082 (Tubiello et al., 2021d). It is also available to users via the FAOSTAT database (FAO, 2021a), with annual updates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent conclusions that new free-air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE) data show a much lower crop yield response to elevated CO2 than thought previously – casting serious doubts on estimates of world food supply in the 21st century – are found to be incorrect, being based in part on technical inconsistencies and lacking statistical significance. First, we show that the magnitude of crop response to elevated CO2 is rather similar across FACE and non-FACE data-sets, as already indicated by several previous comprehensive experimental and modeling analyses, with some differences related to which “ambient” CO2 concentration is used for comparisons. Second, we find that results from most crop model simulations are consistent with the values from FACE experiments. Third, we argue that lower crop responses to elevated CO2 of the magnitudes in question would not significantly alter projections of world food supply. We conclude by highlighting the importance of a better understanding of crop response to elevated CO2 under a variety of experimental and modeling settings, and suggest steps necessary to avoid confusion in future meta-analyses and comparisons of experimental and model data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]