Crop models for future food systems

The future(s) of digital agriculture and sustainable food systems: An analysis of high-level policy documents

The increasing complexity and short product cycles drive developers of mobile systems to analyse the performance of systems before hardware prototypes are available. Therefore, it is necessary to predict application runtimes with the help of simulations of system models. Miscellaneous components and factors of mobile devices affect the performance, e.g. caches, buses etc. In order to predict the performance of new system designs already during early stages of development, models of the timing behaviour are necessary. We have developed a modular timing simulator for models of typical mobile systems which can be used to predict the runtime of applications on future systems. Since UML is the de-facto standard for software modelling and widely used, we use UML to specify the hardware of the system. In this way, the gap between hardware and software modelling may be closed and performance analysis of application and system design are tight closer. The UML system model consists of an architecture model and an instruction behaviour description. The architecture model describes the components of the system and the connections between them and the behavioural model specifies the timing of the processor instructions. These models are used to simulate different configurations of an ARM9 system. Traces from one configuration are used to predict the performance of another configuration. Predictions for an ARM 11 system with parallel pipeline units are made.

<scp>IFST</scp> vision for a <scp>UK</scp>‐wide national food strategy

Integrating framework analysis, scenario design, and decision support system for sustainable healthy food system analysis

Food systems contribute considerably to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and influence land use. In Germany, many strategies have been proposed by policy-makers to reduce negative impacts and make the food system more sustainable. It is unclear how close the suggested policies, when bundled, will bring the food and land use system towards the targeted goals; and what stakeholders from non-policy-making organizations consider realistic changes in the German food system. We thus surveyed different stakeholder groups on their opinions about realistic changes in the food and land use system in Germany up to 2050, developed four stakeholder pathways, and used an accounting tool to determine the effect of each pathway on indicators such as land use, GHG emissions, and biodiversity conservation potential. The assessment showed that GHG emissions from agricultural activities and land use are reduced from 66 to − 2–22 TgCO2e by 2050, while the area where natural processes predominate increases from 19 to 27–32%, and the resilience of the food system is not negatively influenced. The change is caused mainly by a diet-change-induced reduction of livestock production and agricultural area transformation into areas with higher carbon sequestration rates. If followed, the common stakeholder pathway (based on all stakeholder responses) would thus lead towards a sustainable food and land use system, but only if the underlying assumption of a drastic diet change towards more plant-based products comes true. Stakeholders from the academic and public sectors were more likely to assume that such a change was realistic than stakeholders from the private sector.

A sea change

IntroductionBlockchain technology (BCT) has been proposed as a solution for many challenges facing global food systems, including environmental issues related to carbon, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services. Efforts to evaluate the potential of BCT to contribute to these issues are nascent and, in particular, little research has been conducted with the diversity of food system actors who will be implicated in and affected by the use of BCT.MethodsThis paper draws on a series of eleven co-creative workshops conducted with a wide range of food system actors, and highlights narratives about core issues regarding BCT’s impact on and relation to various challenges facing the food system, including environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss. The workshops were conducted in 2023 and 2024, and involved over 100 participants including farmers, researchers, blockchain developers, policymakers, agribusiness companies, and other actors. These workshops began by developing idealized visions of blockchain-based future food systems, interrogated the barriers between the present and these futures, and co-created strategies to overcome these barriers.ResultsThe data that emerged from these workshops, including audio recordings as well as digital whiteboards, were subject to thematic analysis. We present three scenarios of BCT-enabled future food systems, which were produced from this analysis. Subsequently, we highlight four tensions–related to decentralization, inclusion, transparency, and tokenization–underlying these scenarios.DiscussionHow the core tensions we identified can be linked to the broader trend of datafication is discussed. We emphasis that how these tensions are negotiated between different, disparate actors will have significant implications on the impacts that BCT may have on food system transformation.

Sustainable food system innovations are urgently needed to feed a growing human population while staying within planetary boundaries. Farmed edible insects have received considerable scientific and public attention due to their potential to improve food system circularity by upcycling nutrients from organic residual streams to nutritious food. Earthworms, as non-insect invertebrates, have remained largely unrecognized in the future foods debate. However, they are already widely farmed at industrial scale for their capacity to recycle organic wastes and improve soil fertility. We conducted a systematic literature review to provide a quantitative basis on earthworm nutritional composition, thereby positioning earthworms in the future foods debate. Here we show, based on evidence from 142 scientific studies, that farmed earthworms are a potentially interesting food source. They have an attractive nutrient composition compared to the main farmed edible insect species, being especially rich in protein, low in fat and containing a favourable profile of essential amino acids. The content of important fatty acids, minerals and vitamins in earthworm biomass is higher or lower than in edible insects, depending on the feed material. Crude protein and fat contents are higher in farmed versus wild earthworms, indicating that farming conditions provide a lever for further improving the nutritional composition of earthworm biomass. Whether earthworm species or feed materials affect earthworm nutritional composition could not be finally clarified based on the available data. We conclude that earthworms have high potential as a future food from a nutritional perspective, mainly as an alternative source of protein. The integration of earthworm farming in future food systems can be expected to improve sustainability and circularity, potentially giving earthworms an advantage over edible insects.

The global food sector is one of the most impactful sectors in the world, necessitating an urgent shift towards more sustainable practices. Sweden has made great progress in putting sustainability on the agenda as a strategic component of its national development strategy. Still, understanding how a full-scale sustainable food system can be achieved in practice and the drivers of such a transition remain unclear. In this study, we first empirically explore these drivers, their interdependencies and how these affect the Swedish food system's progress towards its sustainability objectives. Then, we assess which scenarios for the future food system in Sweden perform better with regard to sustainability considerations. For the first objective, we utilised the DEMATEL technique to identify and quantify the cause-and-effect relationships among these drivers. The results showed that revenue and the use of toxic materials are key drivers for food systems' sustainability in Sweden, suggesting a path for system improvement focus areas in the future. For the second objective, we applied TOPSIS as a decision-making method for assessing the sustainability of four different future scenarios for the Swedish food system. The outcomes suggest that food tech is the most sustainable scenario among the ones considered. The findings of this study will collectively aid in promoting sustainable consumption, encouraging a shift towards a more sustainable agrifood system in Sweden, a leading nation in sustainability efforts.

Given the range and complexity of pressures on food systems across the globe, we suggest that future research on sustainable food systems can be clustered under three broad topics: the need for integration across multiple jurisdictions, sectors, and disciplines that includes different models of food systems and community visions of an integrated food system; the need for focus on tensions and compromises related to increased numbers and reach of sustainable food systems by scaling out and up; and the need for appropriate governance structures and institutions. Comparative research that works directly with community-based organizations to co-create and apply shared research tools and then engage in common assessment projects offers ways to develop more connected scholarship. More extensive work using concept maps, participatory action research, life-cycle analysis, and urban/rural metabolic flows may help to develop, animate, and answer future research questions in more integrated ways, and will build on opportunities emerging from more inclusive, connected, and multidisciplinary approaches. Work in Ontario helps to illustrate research exploring the three themes through embedded connections to communities of food in the ongoing research project Nourishing Communities.1 1 http://nourishingcommunities.ca

NASA's Human Research Program's (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element adopted Systems Engineering (SE) principles and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools to capture the system functions, system architecture, requirements, interfaces, and clinical capabilities for a future exploration medical system. There are many different stakeholders who may use the information in the model: systems engineers, clinicians (physicians, nurses, and pharmacists), scientists, and program managers. Many of these individuals do not have access to MBSE modeling tools or have never used these tools. Many of these individuals (clinicians, scientists, even program managers) may have no experience with SE in general let alone interpreting a systems model. The challenge faced by ExMC was how to present the content in the model to non-modelers in a way they could understand with limited to no training in MBSE or the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) without using the modeling tool. Therefore, from the model, ExMC created an HTML report that is accessible to anyone with a browser. When creating the HTML report, the ExMC SE team talked to stakeholders and received their feedback on what content they wanted and how to display this content. Factoring in feedback, the report arranges the content in a way that not only directs readers through the SE process taken to derive the requirements, but also helps them to understand the fundamental steps in an SE approach. The report includes links to source information (i.e., NASA documentation that describes levels of care) and other SE deliverables (e.g., Concept of Operations). These links were provided to aid in the understanding of how the team created this content through a methodical SE approach. This paper outlines the process used to develop the model, the data chosen to share with stakeholders, many of the model elements used in the report, the review process stakeholders followed, the comments received from the stakeholders, and the lessons ExMC learned through producing this HTML report.

Genetic techniques for plant breeding

Threats to food security have increased around the world following the increasing threat of climate change over the last few years. Such threats have also become apparent in Southeast Asia. This region is home to 10% of the world's population and is host to the world's largest rice and palm oil exporters. Malaysia and Indonesia play an important role in securing the future supplies of palm oil because these two countries account for 85% of global palm oil production. However, the impact of climate change may cause a food crisis in the future, thus raising the possibility of food losses in the region. This paper is an attempt to revisit the position of Malaysia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia with a particular emphasis on the two countries' role in countering future food crises. It is argued that the current economic relation policies of Malaysia and Indonesia have somewhat neglected the importance of future food security in Southeast Asia. The idea of establishing a council for palm oil producers between the two countries is seen as a ‘game changer'. However, the effect of such an effort is uncertain, and it pays little attention to the need for securing Southeast Asia's future food system. The council needs to commit to moving beyond a ‘revenue driven' rationale. Concerning a regional engagement approach, stronger economic relations between Malaysia and Indonesia can be attributable to a more resilient food system in Southeast Asia. Keywords: Malaysia, Indonesia, palm oil, bilateralism & Southeast Asia

The transformation of our food system using cellular agriculture: What lies ahead and who will lead it?

Values on Your PlateDinner 2040 Joan McGregor (bio) What ought to be on our plate in twenty-five years in order to ensure a sustainable, culturally appropriate, and just food system? That was the focus of a three-day workshop held in the fall of 2014 with North American Observatory researchers headquartered at Arizona State University. With invited world-famous food and seed activist Vandana Shiva, we critically reflected on the question, "What would an environmentally sustainable, socially equitable, and culturally rich meal look like in the year 2040?" Both Shiva and workshop consultant Giovanna Di Chiro have long experience working with community groups to address local and regional food systems, economic development, and agriculture (Di Chiro 2013). The outcome of this workshop, titled Forms of Collaborative Knowledge and Collective Action, was a project, Dinner 2040, that emerged out of and affirms the notion—articulated in an array of international instruments, including the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—that humans have a sovereign right to food (Adamson 2011, 213–15). The aim of Dinner 2040 would be to engage with community members about the humanistic dimensions of our food system and to educate communities about the notion of "food sovereignty," a fast emerging concept covering a range of positions, interventions, and struggles that are "centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system" (Grey and Patel 2015, 431; Adamson 2011, 215). Dinner 2040 is meant to empower communities to envision and ultimately design their own future food system. [End Page 137] The workshop drew together an environmental artist, an urban organic farmer from Phoenix, a Navajo farmer, a Phoenix city administrator, two philosophers, a community public land trust organizer, English professors, a Maricopa food-access worker, two sustainability scientists, food-policy experts, and other humanists and community members who found themselves working in groups to envision what the food system should look like in Maricopa County in 2040.1 We hoped to design a future regional food system focused on the notion that the food system should support and nurture important human values, hence the idea that when we eat, values are on our plates.2 The humanists in the group had begun designing this event in 2013 at two previous workshops organized by the Humanities for the Environment (HfE) project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a grant to the Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centers. Like all HfE projects, this collaborative project would look at the centrality of the contributions of the humanities to the problems of the Anthropocene. The project, one of several piloted by the North American Observatory headquartered at Arizona State University, was designed to focus specifically on the ways that humanists might facilitate transdisciplinary imagination and look toward ways to collaborate with multiple epistemologies in order to tackle challenging problems in the Anthropocene, from conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change to establishing justice in global food systems (McGregor 2014; Adamson 2011). Debates about the Anthropocene often focus on the question of whether we can say that there is a different geological epoch after the Holocene. However, our group engaged in the broader cultural and political discourses that recognize the Anthropocene as a time when humans must come to terms with how to curb environmentally harmful collective actions that appear to be unstoppable, especially colonization, capitalism, and industrialization. Our initial idea, inspired by Valerie Brown's discussion of wicked problems, was a Wicked-pedia, which would take the form of an archive of short entries about complex social and environmental problems. This archive would be found on the WordPress digital platform designed specifically for the HfE project as a mechanism for giving voice to multiple epistemologies. Ultimately, the group built on their own research expertise in food systems and cultural notions surrounding food (McGregor 2014; Adamson 2011; [End Page 138] Carruth 2013; Di Chiro 2013). As a group we decide that producing a shared real-time experience would better exercise the imagination in a dynamic fashion, building on and synthesizing the varied expertise of a...