Volume 6 Issue 10, October 2025

Food is increasingly framed as a security issue — not just as an allusion to external shocks that may put it at risk, but also as a reflection of a political agenda that prioritizes increased agricultural output rather than the systemic changes needed to create more just and sustainable food futures. European food policy must align with scientific evidence, sustainability commitments and democratic principles to create true food security.

Agriculture faces pressures from both growing demands for food production under a changing climate and the need to mitigate climate change. Deep soil management is key to achieving a solution.

Agriculture accounts for the largest proportion of green and blue water consumption. Increasing availability of datasets and models for assessing global crop water footprints can pave the way towards more sustainable allocation of limited green and blue water resources worldwide.

We devised two deployment schemes for renewable-fuelled plant factories to meet the dietary vegetable demand across China’s 369 city-level regions. Our results indicate that renewable-fuelled plant factories ensure sufficient vegetable supply and offer multifaceted benefits, such as land saving and pollutant reduction, but also increase greenhouse gas emissions, highlighting the need for a low-carbon transition.

Unintended and undesirable consequences can hinder policymaking. This Perspective explores how anticipatory governance can reduce ignorance, manage errors and avoid imperious immediacy when shaping future technological innovation to support more sustainable food systems transformations.

Most studies assessing food self-sufficiency look at calories and neglect nutrient gaps. Comparing food demand and potential food production under land and water constraints, this study quantifies 9 key nutrient gaps for each of African’s 54 countries.

This study uses remote sensing and meteorological observations to assess the impact of the 2015 drought on rice in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and in the Republic of Korea. The results show how energy shortages, intensified by trade sanctions, reduced irrigation capacity and led to crop yield loss.

Reduced dependence on wild-caught fish in favour of crop-based ingredients for feeds has supported aquaculture growth. An analysis of ingredient origins versus feed composition shows that origin must be considered to assess the environmental footprint of feed production.

Brazil is known to supply an important share of China’s increasing demand for proteins, but the exact pressure on land and water that results from this is unclear. This study addresses this gap, focusing on soybean trade, showing the persistence of indirect deforestation associated with soy cultivation expansion.

Renewable-fuelled plant factories (RFPFs) offer great promise for resilient food production. This study presents a multidimensional geospatial analysis to devise RFPF deployment schemes that aim to meet the population’s dietary vegetable demand in China’s 369 city-level regions.

Using the most recent Spatial Production Allocation Model 2020 crop data, agricultural green and blue water consumption is estimated. Water use increased by up to four-fifths for major crops in the past two decades.