IPCC: world will miss 1.5°C without transforming food system

http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/news-IPCC-world-miss-1.5-04042022

 Reacting to the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the mitigation of climate change…, experts from IPES-Food called for fundamental reform of food systems to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming. The IPCC report, agreed by governments and scientists, finds that:

  • We are nowhere near on track to achieve the Paris Agreement targets of keeping global warming below 2°C, and ideally 1.5°C. 
  • Investment levels are insufficient to stay Paris aligned and investment gaps are widest for the agriculture, forest and land sector and for developing countries. Investment levels must increase by 3 to 6 times current levels to limit warming to below 2°C. 
  • Agriculture and land use* account for nearly a quarter of GHG emissions and keep rising. Transforming farming and livestock can reduce emissions and draw down carbon.
  • Demand-side mitigation efforts across all sectors – including lifestyle changes, reduction of food waste, and shift to sustainable diets [e.g., increase consumption of plant-based foods and decrease excess meat consumption] – can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; and can improve health and wellbeing. 
  • For emissions that are extremely hard or impossible to reduce, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it is required. But there are limits to how possible this is and entails risks for ecosystems, livelihoods and health.

*“Land use practices such as agroforestry, intercropping, organic inputs, cover crops, and rotational grazing can provide mitigation and support adaptation to climate change via food security, livelihoods, biodiversity, and health co-benefits.” (IPCC, 2022)

For more information, see: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change

https://lnkd.in/gn5BKpQn

“The Working Group III report provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges, and examines the sources of global emissions. It explains developments in emission reduction and mitigation efforts, assessing the impact of national climate pledges in relation to long-term emissions goals.”

Healthy people, healthy planet: a flexitarian approach to sustainable healthy diets (self-study course)

This self-study continuing education course, which was approved by the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR) to offer 2 CPEUs, provides an overview of the EAT-Lancet Commission’s planetary health diet, a largely plant-based flexitarian diet; discusses the principles of a flexitarian diet; describes the nutritional advantages of a flexitarian diet; examines the health and environmental benefits of a flexitarian diet; and provides strategies RDNs can use when counseling their clients on implementing a flexitarian diet.

Learn more at: https://ce.todaysdietitian.com/FlexitarianApproach#group-tabs-node-course-default1

and

https://secure.viewer.zmags.com/publication/ed02d13c#/ed02d13c/1

Since this course was written, two additional studies on the Eat-Lancet planetary health diet have been published, one authored by Stubbendorff et al. (2022) and another by Sun et al. (2022). See below URLs to access these additional articles (references).

References:

Stubbendorff A, Sonestedt E, Ramne S, Drake I, Hallström E, Ericson U. Development of an EAT-Lancet index and its relation to mortality in a Swedish population, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2022;115(3):705–716,  https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab369

Sun Z, Scherer L, Tukker A. et al. Dietary change in high-income nations alone can lead to substantial double climate dividend. Nature Food, 2022;3:29–37, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00431-5

The big problem of food waste: podcast

Episode 4: The Big Problem of Food Waste

In this episode, FoodPrint talks to experts about why food waste is a problem, touches on how some grocery stores, restaurants and food companies are working to fix the problem, and digs into some of the cultural reasons why our society treats food as disposable. Finally, FoodPrint covers how you can reduce your own kitchen waste, getting advice from chefs for how to make changes in how you shop, cook and eat that will make a meaningful difference environmentally and economically.

For more information, see the interactive FoodPrint Guide to Reducing Food Waste titled, “The ABCs of Reducing Food Waste”

Click to access 2021_05_03_FP_ABCsOfReducingFoodWaste_FINAL.pdf

And you can follow FoodPrint on social media @FoodPrintOrg

Want to learn more about how make a difference to stop food waste? “STOP FOOD WASTE DAY,” an international day of action in the fight against food waste, is on April 27, 2022. Find useful resources at: https://www.stopfoodwasteday.com/en/index.html

Finally, see tips and recipes from Food Waste Chef, Anne-Marie Bonneau via her blog and in her cookbook, “The Zero-Waste Chef: Plant-Forward Recipes and Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen and Planet” (2021)

The Zero-Waste Chef Cookbook

No time to lose: Food, diet, and farming are “startlingly absent” from governments’ climate plans, report flags

https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/no-time-to-lose-food-diet-and-farming-are-startlingly-absent-from-governments-climate-plans-report-flags.html

“A new 14-country assessment reveals that actions to improve food systems are a “missed opportunity” to cut at least one-fifth of emissions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

“[F]ood systems are “startlingly absent” from most countries’ official national emissions-reduction plans, according to new Global Alliance for [the] Future of Food research.”

“Without transforming industrialized food systems, it will be impossible to keep global warming below the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees and guarantee food security.”

You can download the Global Alliance for the Future of Food’s report “Untapped Opportunities for Climate Action: An Assessment of Food Systems in Nationally Determined Contributions” (2022) at:

Click to access assessment-of-food-systems-in-ndcs.pdf

“

CAFOs, communities, and alternatives to industrial agriculture: Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy podcast

Listen to this podcast to find out more about viable agricultural alternatives to confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

https://wfpc.sanford.duke.edu/podcasts/cafos-communities-and-alternatives-industrial-agriculture

“Are there models for livestock production that support both farmers and communities? Today, we’re going to explore the complex nature of relationships between farmers and nearby communities and the impact of industrial agricultural practices, such as CAFOs, [which] stands for concentrated animal feeding operations, on those relationships. Our guests today are policy advocate Sarah Carden with Farm Action and community organizer Monica Brooks from the Maryland State Commission for Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities.”

To watch the trailer of a new documentary, “The Smell of Money,” which documents the price being paid for the world’s pork by raising hogs in CAFOs in North Carolina, go to:

The Smell of Money (Documentary)

https://www.smellofmoneydoc.com/

Farms following soil-friendly practices grow healthier food, study suggests

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944624

Excerpt:

“A new study, published in January in the journal PeerJ, looks at how regenerative farming practices — soil-building techniques that minimize plowing, use cover crops, and plant diverse crops — affect the nutritional content of the food.

Results of the preliminary experiment, which included 10 farms across the U.S., show that the crops from farms following soil-friendly practices for at least five years had a healthier nutritional profile than the same crops grown on neighboring, conventional farms. Results showed a boost in certain minerals, vitamins and phytochemicals that benefit human health.

“We couldn’t find studies that related directly to how the health of the soil affects what gets into crops,” said lead author David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. “So we did the experiment that we wished was out there.”

Montgomery designed the study during research for his upcoming book, “What Your Food Ate,” due out in June. His spouse, Anne Biklé, is a biologist and co-author of the study and the upcoming book.”

Source: https://peerj.com/articles/12848/

Citation: Montgomery DR, Biklé A, Archuleta R, Brown P, Jordan J. 2022. Soil health and nutrient density: preliminary comparison of regenerative and conventional farming.  PeerJ 10:e12848 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12848

Less food, more wildfires in North America with climate change: IPCC report

https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/less-food-more-wildfires-in-north-america-with-climate-change

“Global warming “is causing dangerous and widespread disruptions in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world,” said a UN climate change report on Monday. Hotter weather and shifts in rainfall are likely to reduce food production in North America and are a risk to food security, said a fact sheet on climate change’s impacts on the continent.”

“Climate change will continue to shift North American agricultural and fishery suitability ranges (high confidence), and intensify production losses of key crops (high confidence), livestock (medium confidence), fisheries (high confidence) and aquaculture products (medium confidence),” said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Intensified droughts and earlier runoff from diminished snowpack will increase water scarcity during the summer peak water demand period, especially in regions with extensive irrigated agriculture, leading to economic losses and increased pressures on limited groundwater as a substitute for diminished surface water supplies,” said the IPCC in comments directed at the U.S. West and northern Mexico.

“Coastal, riverine, and urban flooding affecting communities and ecosystems will become a dominant risk to (North American) urban centres, displacing people, compromising economic activity, disrupting transportation and trade infrastructure,” said the report. “Large wildfires will increasingly endanger lives, livelihoods, mental and physical health, property, key infrastructure, and economic activities and contribute to compromised air quality and municipal water contamination with multiple human health implications.”

You can download the summary for policymakers, technical summary, and full report here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Interventions that influence animal-product consumption: a meta-review 

 A meta-review on interventions that aim to influence animal-product consumption was published recently in the journal, Future Foods.

The authors found that informing consumers about the environmental consequences of meat consumption may reduce consumption. Providing information on health impacts, emphasizing positive social norms around plant-based diets, and reducing meat portion sizes also appeared promising, although with more limited evidence. “Reviews examining interventions that decreased consumption predominately focused on meat (10/12 reviews).”

The authors concluded that, “[f]uture reviews should conduct quantitative syntheses where appropriate and examine interventions that influence the consumption of animal products other than meat.” See below URL to access the article in its entirety.

Key words: Animal products, Behavior change, Plant-based diet, Nutrition, Food choice, Planetary health

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666833521000976?via%3Dihub

Citation: Grundy, E. A. C., Slattery, P., Saeri, A. K., Watkins, K., Houlden, T., Farr, N., Askin, H., Lee, J., Mintoft-Jones, A., Cyna, S., Dziegielewski, A., Gelber, R., Rowe, A., Mathur, M. B., Timmons, S., Zhao, K., Wilks, M., Peacock, J. R., Harris, J., … Zorker, M. (2022). Interventions that influence animal-product consumption: A meta-review. Future Foods, 5, [100111].  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fufo.2021.100111

A Climate Wake-Up: new report

An important new report titled “A Climate Wake-Up” was published by Forest 500, a project of Global Canopy. The report analyzes commitments to address deforestation as well as human rights commitments in the financial sector, food sector, and within agri-commodity companies. In its 2022 annual report, it is noted that:

  • Nearly three out of four (72%) of the 350 companies do not have a deforestation commitment for all of the forest-risk commodities in their supply chains.
  • One-third (117/350) of companies have no deforestation commitments at all – a small decrease on last year.
  • While 28 companies published a new commitment to address deforestation since last year, just 11 of these have a deforestation commitment for all of the commodities they are exposed to.
  • Many companies with commitments are failing to provide evidence of how they are implementing them, particularly for soy, beef and leather supply chains.
  • None of the companies assessed had a comprehensive approach to human rights.

The report further points out that,

“While consumers are clear that they do not want deforestation on their plates, 27 of the 103 food sector companies assessed do not have a deforestation commitment for all of the beef, soy, and palm that they are exposed to in their supply chain.

While companies in the food sector are most likely to have a commitment to end deforestation in palm oil supply chains, they are less likely to have a commitment for soy or beef supply chains.

Some 75% of the soy produced globally is used for animal feed, so is a hidden ingredient in fish, meat and dairy products.

27% of food sector companies in palm supply chains do not have a commitment that covers their palm oil sourcing

58% of food sector companies in soy supply chains do not have a deforestation commitment for their soy supplies

And just 37% of those with a deforestation commitment for soy apply it to hidden soy

64% of food sector companies in beef supply chains do not have a deforestation commitment for their beef supplies.” (p. 20)

Recommendations are presented for Forest 500 companies and financial institutions, governments, and civil society.

Source: Forest 500, A Project of Global Canopy. A Climate Wake-Up: But Business Failing to Hear the Alarm on Deforestation, January 2022.

You can access the full report at: https://forest500.org/sites/default/files/forest500_2022report_final.pdf

New environmental labelling system unveiled

“Belgium academics have unveiled a new environmental labelling system that enables easy recognition of the degree of environmental sustainability of food and beverages at point of sale.”

https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2022/02/08/new-environmental-labelling-system-unveiled#:~:text=The%20system%20allows%20companies%20to,and%20Sustainable%20Processes%20at%20AZTI.