Empirical analyses of historical yields paired with manipulative experiments reveal that extreme rainfall reduces rice yields in China by physically disturbing the panicle and by reducing available soil nitrogen. Such mechanistic understanding aids prediction and mitigation of damages from climate change.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, among other negative-emission technologies, is required for China to achieve carbon neutrality—yet it may hinder land-based Sustainable Development Goals. Using modelling and scenario analysis, we investigate how to mitigate the potential adverse impacts on the food system of ambitious bioenergy deployment in China and its trading partners. We find that producing bioenergy domestically while sticking to the food self-sufficiency ratio redlines would lower China’s daily per capita calorie intake by 8% and increase domestic food prices by 23% by 2060. Removing China’s food self-sufficiency ratio restrictions could halve the domestic food dilemma but risks transferring environmental burdens to other countries, whereas halving food loss and waste, shifting to healthier diets and narrowing crop yield gaps could effectively mitigate these external effects. Our results show that simultaneously achieving carbon neutrality, food security and global sustainability requires a careful combination of these measures.

Finance is a critical catalyst of food systems transformation. At the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, the Financial Lever Group suggested five imperatives to tap into new financial resources while making better use of existing ones. These imperatives are yet to garner greater traction to instigate meaningful change.

Given the constraints of both overseas development aid and domestic financing for nutrition, innovative financing is critical—yet nutrition lags behind other sectors in catalysing it. Here, we argue that the framing for nutrition must evolve and critical actions must be taken to generate more money for nutrition and more nutrition for money. Food systems hold some of the most powerful opportunities to improve human and planetary health while increasing productivity—and the private sector has a key role to play in this.

Liu and colleagues show that the contribution of food production and fossil fuel combustion to total reactive nitrogen (Nr) emissions increased from 63% to 81% between 1970 and 2018. During this time, food production became the more dominant source of total Nr emissions, increasing its share from 35% to 53%. Two-thirds of nitrogen fertilizer overuse occurred in regions such as China, India and the United States, with rice, wheat and maize contributing 72% of the excessive nitrogen fertilizer use. Food production accounted for 94% of total oceanic reduced reactive nitrogen (NHx) deposition, and for most coastal regions, the share of food-production deposition exceeded 90%. Liu and colleagues also modelled the impacts of reducing fertilizer use, finding that a 19% reduction in oceanic NHx deposition from food production was possible if global oceanic NHx deposition was reduced by 15%.

Pigmented rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a rich source of nutrients, but pigmented lines typically have long life cycles and limited productivity. Here we generated genome assemblies of 5 pigmented rice varieties and evaluated the genetic variation among 51 pigmented rice varieties by resequencing an additional 46 varieties. Phylogenetic analyses divided the pigmented varieties into four varietal groups: Geng-japonica, Xian-indica, circum-Aus and circum-Basmati. Metabolomics and ionomics profiling revealed that black rice varieties are rich in aromatic secondary metabolites. We established a regeneration and transformation system and used CRISPR–Cas9 to knock out three flowering time repressors (Hd2, Hd4 and Hd5) in the black Indonesian rice Cempo Ireng, resulting in an early maturing variety with shorter stature. Our study thus provides a multi-omics resource for understanding and improving Asian pigmented rice.

The recent involvement of Nestlé in the Africa Food Prize reinforces the presence of the ultra-processed food industry in the continent and invites us to reflect on the implications this may have for Africa’s sustainable food systems agenda.

Shifting finance towards food security and sustainability goals will require a systemic approach and the involvement of both public and private actors.

Now, Yaoyao Wu from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science and colleagues have developed a deep-phylogeny approach to identify deleterious mutations. The team employed 92 species in the Solanaceae family (with an emphasis on the genus Solanum to which potato belongs) and its sister clade Convolvulaceae to construct a deep phylogeny. With whole-genome alignment, the team identified genome-wide synteny among Solanaceae genomes and inferred the evolutionary constraints across the potato genome. The team then identified 367,499 deleterious variants in diploid potatoes by screening a representative diploid potato diversity panel. Wu and colleagues reported that when including the inferred deleterious mutations, the genomic prediction accuracy for yield increased by 24.7%.

Aaditya Venkatachalam from Wageningen University and colleagues use a pea-based model ink to quantify how the macronutrients carbohydrates (fibre and starch) and proteins impact the printability of different water-based food ink formulations. The printability of food ink formulations was evaluated in terms of extrudability (that is, extrusion force), buildability (that is, flow point) and printing precision (that is, surface defect index). The team found that the extrudability of the pea-based formulations was strongly influenced by the macronutrient composition, which was highly correlated to buildability. The printing precision of the pea-based formulations also varied with macronutrient composition. In general, increasing protein concentration resulted in increased extrusion force and flow point, while increasing fibre content decreased the extrusion force and flow point. Of all the printed samples, about 71% could be printed to a height of 50 mm with high printing precision.

Food systems are the largest users of land and water resources worldwide. Using a multi-model approach to track food through the global trade network, we calculated the land footprint (LF) and water footprint (WF) of food consumption in the European Union (EU). We estimated the EU LF as 140–222 Mha yr−1 and WF as 569–918 km3 yr−1. These amounts are 5–7% of the global LF and 6–10% of the global WF of agriculture, with the EU representing 6% of the global population. We also calculated the global LF of livestock grazing, accounting only for grass eaten, to be 1,411–1,657 Mha yr−1, and the global LF of agriculture to be 2,809–3,014 Mha yr−1, which is about two-thirds of what the Food and Agriculture Organization Statistics (FAOSTAT) database reports. We discuss here the different methods for calculating the LF for livestock grazing, underscoring the need for a consistent methodology when monitoring the food LF and WF reduction goals set by the EU’s Farm To Fork Strategy.

Now, Stanislas Rigal, from the University of Montpellier, and colleagues have quantified the impact of agricultural intensification on European bird populations. The authors applied partial least square regression and convergent cross mapping to determine the direct relationship between population time series (including 170 bird species in more than 20,000 sites in 28 European countries, over 37 years) and 4 widespread anthropogenic pressures (namely agricultural intensification, change in forest cover, urbanization and temperature change). The method allowed the authors to generate quasicausal responses of bird populations to global change drivers, which represents an important advance relative to the existing literature based on indirect correlations.

Potential external cost savings associated with the reduction of animal-sourced foods remain poorly understood. Here we combine life cycle assessment principles and monetarization factors to estimate the monetary worth of damage to human health and ecosystems caused by the environmental impacts of food production. We find that, globally, approximately US$2 of production-related external costs were embedded in every dollar of food expenditure in 2018—corresponding to US$14.0 trillion of externalities. A dietary shift away from animal-sourced foods could greatly reduce these ‘hidden’ costs, saving up to US$7.3 trillion worth of production-related health burden and ecosystem degradation while curbing carbon emissions. By comparing the health effects of dietary change from the consumption versus the production of food, we also show that omitting the latter means underestimating the benefits of more plant-based diets. Our analysis reveals the substantial potential of dietary change, particularly in high and upper-middle-income countries, to deliver socio-economic benefits while mitigating climate change.

A framework for analysing connectivity in US food flow networks reveals locations that are vital leverage points for well-functioning domestic agri-food supply chains. Planning around these logistics hubs could help build resilience to various threats and disruptions facing food systems.

The local loss of a crop can affect food availability in other countries, directly through trade but also indirectly if production inputs become unavailable. Quantifying the direct and often overlooked indirect effects of local shocks could inform the design of resilient food supply chains and effective crisis responses.

The assignment of foods to one of four categories proposed by the Nova framework may be challenging in the absence of information on how these foods were prepared and their specific composition. A three-step iterative approach can make the categorization process more efficient and transparent, thereby increasing the accuracy of Nova estimates.

The double burden of malnutrition affects one-third of children globally. Knowledge on children’s current food consumption and related sociodemographic factors can guide actions towards improving children’s lifelong nutrition and health, and promote environmentally sustainable diets.

Current knowledge on what’s needed to achieve food security and sustainable food systems could have brought us further than where we are now. Without structural changes, however, progress is bound to remain stalled.

Present food consumption patterns will intensify pressure on natural resources, while poor nutrition is expected to prevail at both low and high levels of calorie consumption. To better understand the interplay between food security, environment and health, we use an integrated framework that allows for the analysis of the dynamics of the double burden of malnutrition and its health and environmental impacts by 2050. We find that excessive caloric intake will be key in rising body mass index levels, particularly in emerging economies. Because higher levels of body mass index will be reached at younger ages, future cohorts will increase their exposure to health risks, including coronary heart disease, stroke, site-specific cancers and type 2 diabetes. This framework also offers insights into the health, food and environmental security impacts of changing food demand behaviour. We find that reductions in food purchasing—associated with the mitigation of food waste and excessive food intake—are more important than changes in dietary composition in increasing food affordability and reducing pressure on cropland expansion, whereas dietary composition is critical in driving greenhouse gas emissions.

Variations in land and water footprint accounts should not shift attention away from the potential to reduce the environmental impact embedded in food choices.