Map of countries at climate change risk (online)

This Map Shows The Countries That’ll Survive Global Warming

 An interesting map from The Eco Experts shows the countries most at risk from climate change.

Diversifying food systems (journal)

Diversifying Food Systems in the Pursuit of Sustainable Food Production and Healthy Diets

 Increasing demand for nutritious, safe, and healthy food because of a growing population, and the pledge to maintain biodiversity and other resources, pose a major challenge to agriculture that is already threatened by a changing climate. Diverse and healthy diets, largely based on plant-derived food, may reduce diet-related illnesses. Investments in plant sciences will be necessary to design diverse cropping systems balancing productivity, sustainability, and nutritional quality. Cultivar diversity and nutritional quality are crucial. We call for better cooperation between food and medical scientists, food sector industries, breeders, and farmers to develop diversified and nutritious cultivars that reduce soil degradation and dependence on external inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides, and to increase adaptation to climate change and resistance to emerging pests.

Via Campesina declaration (online)

VIIth International Conference, La Via Campesina: Euskal Herria Declaration

Click the link above to read the new Via Campesina Declaration.

Microbes produce soil organic matter (journal)

Direct evidence for microbial-derived soil organic matter formation and its ecophysiological controls

Soil organic matter (SOM) and the carbon and nutrients therein drive fundamental submicron- to global-scale biogeochemical processes and influence carbon-climate feedbacks. Consensus is emerging that microbial materials are an important constituent of stable SOM. However, direct evidence demonstrating that microbial residues account for the chemistry, stability and abundance of SOM is still lacking. Here the authors provide the first direct evidence that soil microbes produce chemically diverse, stable SOM. We show that SOM accumulation is driven by distinct microbial communities more so than clay mineralogy, where microbial-derived SOM accumulation is greatest in soils with higher fungal abundances and more efficient microbial biomass production.

Micro-gardens for low income families (online)

With micro-gardens, urban poor"grow their own"

To boost the overall supply of horticultural produce to the world’s developing cities, FAO promotes the sustainable intensification of commercial market gardening on urban peripheries. In densely populated areas, it has a complementary strategy: to help low-income households improve their food and nutrition security by growing their own vegetables in micro-gardens. 

Sustainable food system transitions (journal special issue)

Understanding Sustainable Food System Transitions: Practice, Assessment and Governance

A new special issue of Sociologia Ruralis is now online. The special issue provides theoretical insights and advancements into sustainability transitions through empirically grounded and informed investigations of food system practices. The papers confirm, following Hinrichs (2014, p. 143), that ‘numerous opportunities exist to forge more productive links between work on food systems change and the broad and growing sustainability transitions field’.

The Special Issue brings together 8 articles grouped together around two themes:

1.  Examining relations between AFN practices and transition;
2. Opening up measures and assessment practices for sustainability transitions.

 

TED talk on food movements (video)

Food movements, climate resilience, social change (TEDx Berkeley)

 Eric Holt-Gimenez advocates for food security and food justice for all farm workers. We all, as a society, will benefit from addressing these global issues.