A critical analysis of the post World-War II industrial agriculture and food system showed a number of drawbacks. To overcome these difficulties a new paradigm is needed: sustainable food security that requires a focus on local resources. Starting from recently published articles and new research the book „Local Food for Global Future“ by Dr. Harry Donkers presents a structured approach, which  offers opportunities and challenges for local and regional food systems, that we se re-emerging globally.

Based on a new classification of local food system the book goes into adequate governance structures. This is demonstrated by a number of examples chosen from all over the world. Special attention is given to developments in The Netherlands and in Russia. A thorough overview is presented of the specific types of knowledge and innovation that is needed for a strong development of the local food systems.

The book uncovers the power of local food beyond the local territory. Questions are answered about the consequences when developing regional food systems worldwide. A clear vision is presented on local and regional food and its significance and potential impact on global future, with a fascinating perspective for all people involved.

About the author: Dr. Harry Donkers has a broad experience on research and -management. He was first author of the books „With every bite a better countryside“ and „Regions, finger-licking good“ and wrote about 200 publications on societal subjects. From 2006-2010 he joined the Arc of Taste Commission of Slow Food Netherlands.

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Am 08. August ist es leider schon wieder so weit: Der globale Erdüberlastingstag, Earth Overshoot Day für das Jahr 2016  ist erreicht, d. h. die natürlichen Ressourcen für das jahr sind aufgebraucht, alles was wir danach angreifen, geht zu Lasten der Natur und der Zukunft: Wir leben auf Pump.

Wie viel Natur haben wir – wie viel nutzen wir? Auf diese Frage gibt die Footprint-Methode eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Antwort.

Die maßgeblich von Mathis Wackernagel, Präsident des Global Footprint Network in Oakland/Kalifornien und Genf entwickelte Footprint-Methode (oder ökologischer Fußabdruck) ist für die Planung und Risikoabschätzungen von Unternehmern, Investoren, Entwicklungsfachleuten, Stadtplanern und politischen Strategen unverzichtbar.

Mathis Wackernagel & Bert Beyers: FOOTPRINT. Die Welt neu vermessen, Neuausgabe 2016 mit aktuellen Zahlen und Kommentaren, Grafiken und Tabellen, 256 Seiten, broschiert, € 19,90 bei der Europäischen Verlagsanstalt. Das Buch kann man zum Beispiel bei Buch7.de bestellen, wo 75% des Gewinns an soziale, kulturelle und ökologische Projekte gespendet werden.

The 2016 edition of the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook provides an assessment of the medium-term prospects of global agriculture. The report highlights that for the sector to meet the expanding demand for food, feed and raw products for industrial uses, significant production growth is needed.

This expansion will have to take place in the face of declining land and water availability for many areas in the world, compounded by the effects of climate change. It is clear that the majority of growth will have to come from more efficiency in agricultural production, but also from improvements throughout the wider value chain.

The international community has recognised the key role of agriculture in addressing society’s goals. Agriculture is a key sector for the achievement of many goals in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to end poverty and hunger and promote prosperity and people’s wellbeing, while protecting the environment. This Outlook outlines how agriculture can actively contribute to the attainment of these goals.

Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture reached an all time high in 2014, at 5.25 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalents per year (Gt CO2eq yr-1). The data released by FAO (13 June 2016) in the FAOSTAT Emissions database to the year 2014, are the first to be made available to the public and scientific community. They form the base of a new collaborative report on agriculture and GHG emissions by the University of Minnesota, written together with FAO, the CGIAR system and various universities.

The new FAO data indicate that in 2014 methane and nitrous oxide emissions from crop and livestock management remain strong and may begin to grow faster than fossil fuel emissions, reversing decadal trends since the 1960s, during which fossil fuel emissions had grown several times faster than agriculture.

Emissions from agriculture represented only about 14.6% of the 2014 total carbon emissions from fossil fuels, but their growth rate compared to emissions from fossil fuels was more than double in 2014, at 1.3% annually. While global emissions from fossil fuels are expected decrease in 2015 for the first time in recent history, this is unlikely to happen for agriculture.

Historically, emissions from fossil fuels grew much faster than those in agriculture. Emissions from fossil fuels in 2014 represented a tripling of emissions since 1961, while those from agriculture nearly doubled in 2014 with respect to 1961. Since 1990 (reference year for the Kyoto Protocol) fossil fuels emissions increased by 60%, while those from agriculture grew from 1961 to 2014 by only 15%.

Thus the emissions trends observed in 2014 may represent a reversal between fossil fuels and agriculture emissions that should be monitored closely in coming years, as the world energy mix continues to decouple from carbon through increased use of renewable energy sources. By contrast, emissions from agriculture will continue to depend for many more years on crop and livestock processes with inherently higher carbon intensities.

Many influential studies have helped shape our understanding of the perilous situation our food systems are in, from the degradation of ecosystems to the fragility of farmer livelihoods in many parts of the world; from the persistence of hunger and under-nutrition to the rampant growth of obesity and diet-related diseases.

However, few studies have yet to provide a comprehensive view of how alternative food systems, based around fundamentally different agricultural models, perform against the same criteria. Even fewer have mapped out the pathways of transition towards the sustainable food systems of the future.

This report explores the potential for a shift to occur from current food systems, characterized by industrial modes of agriculture, to systems based around diversified agroecological farming. It asks what the impacts on food systems would be if diversity, rather than uniformity, were the key imperative. The ecological benefits of such a shift have been widely documented. The key question, and the one asked in this report, is where the trade-offs lie.

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA, German: Solidarische Landwirtschaft) movement is being increasingly recognized for offering an alternative to the unsustainable industrial food system and thus as a concrete approach in the transition towards agroecology and food sovereignty.

In the “European CSA Overview”, the European CSA Research Group combines the knowledge of actors from 22 European countries. All these actors are from the interface of research and farming and have an intimate knowledge of CSAs in their respective countries. The Report thus gives an insiders’ perspective on the state and the dynamics of the CSA movement in the continent. With this Report, the European CSA Research Group aims to improve knowledge generation and sharing amongst CSAs in Europe and to create awareness among policy makers and the wider public that functioning alternatives to industrial food dependency exist.

Apart from presenting the results of a Europe wide census, this report analyses the agro-ecological dimension of CSA practice.