Summer is a busy time and there’s been a lot flying around in the agri-food space. Jez Fredenburgh, our Knowledge Exchange Fellow, has digested a selection of spring/ summer reports and papers so you don’t have to. Here are some key learnings:

🍔 Shifting diets towards alternative proteins could more than halve the engineered carbon removal needed to reach net zero by 2050. With the ‘land dividend’ (freed-up land), the UK could also farm 39% of its land organically, double its semi-natural habitat, increase self-sufficiency by a third, and reduce overseas land use by two thirds. That’s in a ‘high innovation’ scenario, where governments support the alternative protein market, and two thirds of meat and dairy consumed in Europe is displaced by 2050. In Europe, the ten countries studied would become food self-sufficient in terms of net land use; farmers could use more land to benefit from the carbon removal market, and agro-ecological farmland would quadruple. Read the Green Alliance report, and country profiles.

🔬 Cultured meat may well sit alongside livestock farming in the future, but could present opportunities for some UK farmers. This includes; increased competitive edge for selling high-value ‘real meat’; supplying animal cells or raw or processed materials; or producing cultured meat on farm. Farmers have many concerns about cultured meat beyond their bottom line, including who might benefit (and lose) from further food industrialisation. Read the RAU report and HOLD THE DATE for our next webinar, which will explore this topic with the authors of this report and the one above from the Green Alliance – 11 Sep, 13.00.

👩‍🌾 Helping farmers take advantage of new jobs in a future low-emissions agri-food system will be a key priority. Poorly designed agri-food system reforms could unintentionally lead to lower agricultural production and higher food prices: For example; afforestation measures to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal could put 40 million people at risk of food insecurity by 2050 and indiscriminately pricing food-related GHG emissions could increase food prices more than climate change’s impacts on production would. The global agri-food system has massive untapped potential for low-cost emissions reduction, yet receives only 4.3% of total climate finance. Less than 3% of this goes to policy making and capacity building, and less than 1% for promoting low-emissions diets or reducing food loss and waste. All of this and so much more in the World Bank’s Recipe for a Liveable Planet report. I’ll do a proper digest of its 200+ pages soon.

♻ Circular food systems could potentially support current European protein intake, while reducing land use and greenhouse gas emissions. Maintaining the current animal–plant protein share while redesigning the system with circular principles resulted in a 44% decrease in land use and 70% in emissions. Shifting from a 60:40 to a 40:60 ratio of animal-sourced proteins to plant-sourced proteins yielded a 60% reduction in land use and an 81% reduction in emissions – while supporting nutritionally adequate diets. Read the paper in Nature. 

💰 There is a gap in agri-tech funding for long-term, systems-based research, as well as a funding mechanism to accelerate urgent research projects. This is despite the fact that across sectors there is a shared ambition to improve research and innovation through collaboration and knowledge exchange. Key drivers of high quality research and development include the structure and scope of funding and investment, and an availability of capabilities including infrastructure and expertise. Read the Agri-tech Centre report.

🌱 Many farmers are enthusiastic about regen farming, but need solid data to demonstrate that it will work in their own context before taking the leap. They also need long term commercial support and contracts, including with banks, and better knowledge/ skills in biodiversity, soil structure, water tables, chemical reduction, and data collection. They need an immediate economic response – they do not have 3-5 years. Read the Future Food Movement report from Groundswell.

🔥 Around 90% of farmers surveyed believe civil unrest related to the food system is possible within the next 50 years. This makes farmers more concerned about the vulnerability of the UK food system than food system experts are. Farmers agree with experts on the majority of potential causes; climate change, trade policies (import and export), competition for land and ecological collapse. However, they also highlight the importance of the power structure within the food system, with large corporations supplying to, or buying from, farmers, creating lower revenue and making farming an unsustainable business. Read the paper in Sustainability, which comes from our very own Prof Sarah Bridle.

🚜 Efficiency improvements in farming (and therefore in reducing emissions) have been falling in recent years, globally. Between 1961 and 2010, efficiency improvements led to a two-thirds drop in emissions, but these improvements appear to have been levelling off since. The accelerated expansion of cropland is also reducing the amount of natural land acting as carbon sinks. Increasing amounts of crop material are being turned into fuel sources rather than used as food. Read the study in PNAS.