This book features a comprehensive foresight assessment, exploring the pressures — threats as well as opportunities — on the global agriculture & food systems between now and 2050. The overarching aim is to help readers understand the context, by analyzing global trends and anticipating change for better planning and constructing pathways from the present to the future by focusing on the right questions and problems. The book contextualizes the role of international agricultural research in addressing the complex challenges posed by UN 2030 Agenda and beyond, and identifies the decisions that scientific leaders, donors and policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to nine billion or more combined with rising incomes and changing diets can be fed sustainably and equitably, in the face of the growing climate threats.

Food systems around the world face a triple challenge: providing food security and nutrition for a growing global population; supporting livelihoods for those working along the food supply chain; and contributing to environmental sustainability. Better policies hold tremendous promise for making progress in these domains.

New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

extreme weather will mean ongoing challenges to the capacity of these sectors to support human well-being, grow the economy, and provide critical environmental services. Society has yet to evaluate the resilience of FEWS to climate, environmental, and management stresses as it shapes strategies to support sustainable development over the next decades. These issues constitute a quintessential interdisciplinary research challenge and require a well-structured science agenda and supportive information services for implementing key findings that governments and stakeholders can adopt. Integrated policy pathways require usable research findings, applications, models, real-time information systems, and decision support systems. In addition, stakeholder engagement is essential to communicate the benefits and results of these approaches and to engage appropriate groups in their implementation.

A public health approach to the US food system Introduction to the US Food System: Public Health, Environment, and Equity is a comprehensive and engaging textbook that offers students an overview of today's US food system, with particular focus on the food system's interrelationships with public health, the environment, equity, and society. Using a classroom-friendly approach, the text covers the core content of the food system and provides evidence-based perspectives reflecting the tremendous breadth of issues and ideas important to understanding today's US food system. The book is rich with illustrative examples, case studies, activities, and discussion questions. The textbook is a project of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), and builds upon the Center's educational mission to examine the complex interrelationships between diet, food production, environment, and human health to advance an ecological perspective in reducing threats to the health of the public, and to promote policies that protect health, the global environment, and the ability to sustain life for future generations. Issues covered in Introduction to the US Food System include food insecurity, social justice, community and worker health concerns, food marketing, nutrition, resource depletion, and ecological degradation. Presents concepts on the foundations of the US food system, crop production, food system economics, processing and packaging, consumption and overconsumption, and the environmental impacts of food Examines the political factors that influence food and how it is produced Ideal for students and professionals in many fields, including public health, nutritional science, nursing, medicine, environment, policy, business, and social science, among others Introduction to the US Food System presents a broad view of today's US food system in all its complexity and provides opportunities for students to examine the food system's stickiest problems and think critically about solutions.