Tim G Benton

Chatham House · Environment and Society Centre

1. A substantial proportion of the global land surface is used for agricultural production. Agricultural land serves multiple societal purposes; it provides food, fuel and fibre and also acts as habitat for organisms and supports the services they provide. Biodiversity conservation and food production need to be balanced: production needs to be sus...

In December 2013, the European Union (EU) enacted the reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for 2014–2020, allocating almost 40% of the EU's budget and influencing management of half of its terrestrial area. Many EU politicians are announcing the new CAP as “greener,” but the new environmental prescriptions are so diluted that they are unlikely...

Clearer understanding is needed of the premises underlying SI and how it relates to food-system priorities.

Modellers of biological, ecological, and environmental systems cannot take for granted the maxim 'simple means general means good'. We argue here that viewing simple models as the main way to achieve generality may be an obstacle to the progress of ecological research. We show how complex models can be both desirable and general, and how simple and...

Understanding the consequences of environmental change on ecological and evolutionary dynamics is inherently problematic because of the complex interplay between them. Using invertebrates in microcosms, we characterise phenotypic, population and evolutionary dynamics before, during and after exposure to a novel environment and harvesting over 20 ge...

The integrated and indivisible nature of the SDGs is facing implementation challenges due to the silo approaches. We present the three interconnected foci (SDG interactions, modeling, and tools) at the science-policy interface to address these challenges. Accounting for them will support accelerated SDG progress, operationalizing the integration an...

In Press/Preprint This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review. It is currently undergoing copyediting and typesetting. Although final publication galleys will be added at a later stage, the article is fully citable using the DOI number. This scoping review examines environmental impacts related to food production a...

Assessing the environmental impacts of food, food systems and diets is highly complex due to the multitude of processes involved, the uncertainty in assessment models, the variability in production systems and the large range of products available. No single assessment method alone can provide a complete evidence base. The increasing number of Life...

Improving nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa under increasing climate risks and population growth requires a strong and contextualized evidence base. Yet, to date, few studies have assessed climate-smart agriculture and nutrition security simultaneously. Here we use an integrated assessment framework (iFEED) to explore stakeholder-driven scen...

We report the results of a structured expert elicitation to identify the most likely types of potential food system disruption scenarios for the UK, focusing on routes to civil unrest. We take a backcasting approach by defining as an end-point a societal event in which 1 in 2000 people have been injured in the UK, which 40% of experts rated as “Pos...

Climate change and environmental degradation are very much a threat to livelihoods and economies, as well as growing drivers of geopolitical tension. However, climate change is not breaking news: Eunice Foote, in 1856, and John Tyndall, in 1859, independently showed the reality of the greenhouse effect, whereby increasing the amount of carbon dioxi...

In late 2021, a range of experts from around the world were approached to provide expert input to the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)–the new strategic framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that will guide interventions to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services for the next three decades. In this opinion...

Supporting information for Bradter et al 2022 Variable ranking and selection with random forest for unbalanced data. Environmental Data Science 1: e30, 1-23.

Agriculture is the largest single source of environmental degradation, responsible for over 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 70% of freshwater use and 80% of land conversion: it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss (Foley JA, Science 309:570–574, 2005, Nature 478:337–342, 2011; IPBES. Global assessment report on biodiversi...

When one or several classes are much less prevalent than another class (unbalanced data), class error rates and variable importances of the machine learning algorithm random forest can be biased, particularly when sample sizes are smaller, imbalance levels higher, and effect sizes of important variables smaller. Using simulated data varying in size...

Sheryl L Hendriks and colleagues describe the global risks and vulnerabilities associated with health, food security, and nutrition

Climate change will put millions more people in Africa at risk of food and nutrition insecurity by 2050. Integrated assessments of food systems tend to be limited by either heavy reliance on models or a lack of information on food and nutrition security. Accordingly, we developed a novel integrated assessment framework that combines models with in-...

Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and polic...

Interactions between soil quality and climate change may influence the capacity of croplands to produce sufficient food. Here, we address this issue by using a new dataset of soil, climate and associated yield observations for 12,115 site-years representing 90% of total cereal production in China. Across crops and environmental conditions, we show...

https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/2022-05-24-sustainable-agriculture-benton-harwatt_3.pdf How to move towards sustainability in agriculture, and in food systems more generally, has become an ever more urgent topic of debate at international level. There is little or no consensus among policymakers on how this can be done. Pr...

Managing phosphorus underpins the sustainability of the food system and is vital in achieving future food security. Strategies to deliver phosphorus sustainability include a transition to circular phosphorus value chains, land-use planning approaches that support greater phosphorus use efficiency and a reduction in consumption of animal products. A...

There are abundant opportunities to transition towards more sustainable phosphorus use. Taken collectively, these solutions unlock multiple environmental and societal benefits. Actions must be delivered cooperatively, as part of an integrated plan across sectors and scales. Indeed, coordinated action on phosphorus to support governments, existing c...

Because AFSs are diverse, dynamic, and evolve continuously, they require massive continuous investment to enable ongoing discovery and adaptation merely to prevent backsliding.

So how do we reverse the growing carbon, land, and toxic chemical footprint of contemporary AVCs; expand the nutrient-rich food supply; and induce more equitable, inclusive, healthier food environments—and thus consumption patterns—so as to navigate from today’s unsustainable and precarious AVCs to a warmer, more urban, more African, and shock-pron...

As we look 25–50 years, or more, into the future, we must also keep in mind how very different tomorrow’s world will inevitably look. Three big, inevitable changes stand out, with serious implications for AFS and AVC innovations.

The complex pathways from innovation to impact mean that unintended spilloverSpillovers effects on non-target objectives are always likely. This generates a third reason—in addition to accelerators and complementarity in pursuit of target objectives—why socio-technical bundlesBundle/bundling are important. Herrero et al. (2020, 2021) demonstrated t...

Scientific discovery is neither linear nor predictable. The time it takes to develop breakthrough technologies varies enormously among application domains. Some basic scientific discoveries remain elusive and will need continued, concerted funding and attention in the years and decades ahead. In some cases, the stumbling block is the scientific adv...

Technological and institutional innovationsin agri-food systems (AFSs) over the past century have brought dramatic advances in human well-being worldwide.

A key implication of the abundance of promising technologies in various stages of development is that AFS transformation is less likely to be limited by science-based discovery than by human agency . What key players do in response to the wealth of options they face will ultimately determine the path(s) we follow.

Repeated episodes throughout history remind us that AFSs episodically undergo dramatic transformations, most of them purposeful—guided by incentives prevailing at the time—rather than purely random changes. Typically, these changes have taken decades or centuries. A major shock, like the COVID-19 pandemic, may help spark the more rapid transformati...

One might reasonably invoke Dickens in describing AFSs and AVCs today: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

As detailed in Marshall et al. (Quinn Marshall, Jessica Fanzo, Christopher B. Barrett, Andrew D. Jones, Anna Herforth, and Rebecca McLaren, “Building a global food systems typology: A new tool for reducing complexity in food systems analysis,” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, vol. 5 (November 2021): 746512), the food systemsFoodsystemstypolog...

The key message from this research, in light of lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, is the need for preparation and contingency planning with national food system strategies and internationally agreed measures to protect food and nutrition security. Fundamentally, prevention, in the form of reducing climate risks through deep and rapid miti...

Background Food production accounts for 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Less environmentally sustainable diets are also often more processed, energy-dense and nutrient-poor. To date, the environmental impact of diets have mostly been based on a limited number of broad food groups. Objectives We link GHG emissions to over 3000 foods,...

Food systems are at the center of a brewing storm consisting of a rapidly changing climate, rising hunger and malnutrition and significant social inequities. At the same time, there are vast opportunities to ensure that food systems produce healthy and safe food in equitable ways that promote environmental sustainability, especially if the world ca...

The crucial roles of biodiversity in agriculture - a necessary understanding if agirculture is to become more sustainable.

The linkages between agriculture and biodiversity - an imperative for understanding sustainable food production

Phenotypic plasticity is predicted to evolve in more variable environments, conferring an advantage on individual lifetime fitness. It is less clear what the potential consequences of that plasticity will have on ecological population dynamics. Here, we use an invertebrate model system to examine the effects of environmental variation (resource ava...

This first climate risk session will set the scene for the Climate Exp0 conference. With global temperatures now over 1°C above pre-industrial levels, and as the impacts of climate change are starting to be felt around the world, this session will present an overview of our current understanding of climate risk including systemic risks resulting fr...

The COVID‐19 pandemic is a major shock to society in terms of health and economy that is affecting both UK and global food and nutrition security. It is adding to the ‘perfect storm’ of threats to society from climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, at a time of considerable change, rising nationalism and breakdown in internati...

The report describes the food system impacts on biodiversity loss at the global level and recommends three levers for food system transformation in support of nature.

Coupling technological advances with sociocultural and policy changes can transform agri-food systems to address pressing climate, economic, environmental, health and social challenges. An international expert panel reports on options to induce contextualized combinations of innovations that can balance multiple goals.

Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, the...

Link to public copy https://www.nature.com/documents/Bundles_agrifood_transformation.pdf

The nature and gravity of challenges linking agriculture and food value chains to diets, health and planetary ecosystems can no longer be ignored — the case for fundamental transformation of food systems is now irrefutable. Achieving transformation will require a major shift in mindsets — especially regarding possible futures versus the status quo,...

Cities will play a key role in the grand challenge of nourishing a growing global population, because, due to their population density, they set the demand. To ensure that food systems are sustainable as well as nourishing, one solution often suggested is to shorten their supply chains towards a regional rather than a global basis. Whilst such regi...

Future technologies and systemic innovation are critical for the profound transformation the food system needs. These innovations range from food production, land use and emissions, all the way to improved diets and waste management. Here, we identify these technologies, assess their readiness and propose eight action points that could accelerate t...

A food system framework breaks down entrenched sectoral categories and existing adaptation and mitigation silos, presenting novel ways of assessing and enabling integrated climate change solutions from production to consumption.

Climate tipping points, such as the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could drive significant structural changes in agriculture, with profound consequences for global food security.

Table SM5.1 A gendered approach to understanding how climate change affects dimensions of food 3 security across pastoral and agro-pastoral livestock-holders (adapted from McKune et al. (2015); Ongoro 4 and Ogara (2012) and Fratkin et al. (2004). ↑increased, ↓decreased 5 Group Livelihoods Health Nutrition Pastoral ↑ time demand on women and girls f...

Remote sensing of vegetation provides important information for ecological applications and environmental assessments. The association between vegetation composition and structure with its spectral signal can most fully be assessed with hyperspectral data. Particularly field spectroscopy data can improve such understanding as the spectral data can...

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice col...

Detailed maps of vegetation facilitate spatial conservation planning. Such information can be difficult to map from remotely sensed data with the detail (thematic resolution) required for ecological applications. For grass-dominated habitats in the South-East of the UK, it was evaluated which of the following choices improved classification accurac...

This is the food security chapter of the IPCC SRLCC. It provides a synthesis of impacts, adaptation and mitigation issues from the perspective of food systems.

This is the Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC Special Report on Land and Climate Change, as approved by the IPCC member countries at the Plenary in Geneva, Aug 2-7 2019.

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice col...

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice col...

Abstract The food system was developed around a set of policy drivers to make food cheaper and more available, these included promoting agricultural productivity and global trade to increase the availability of food. However, as has been recognised by a plethora of recent papers and reports, these factors have also led to a food system that is unsu...

Non-technical summary The principal policy focus for food has been to increase agricultural productivity and to liberalize markets allowing globalized trade. This focus has led to huge growth in the supply of agricultural produce, more calories becoming available, and price declining. The availability of cheaper calories increasingly underpins diet...

Brexit, for better or worse, means a major structural change in how people in the UK think about the food they eat. There is an opportunity to reformulate food policy for the better, but this could be easily squandered if not managed carefully.

Organic agriculture is a system that aims to primarily use ecologic processes rather than external inputs to manage crops and livestock. Diversity is a key component of natural ecosystems and organic agriculture often includes the use of diversity as a management paradigm, as well as the stated goal to enhance diversity. But how does organic agricu...

Sustainably feeding the next generation is often described as one of the most pressing “grand challenges” facing the 21st century. Generally, scholars propose addressing this problem by increasing agricultural production, investing in technology to boost yields, changing diets, or reducing food waste. In this paper, we explore whether global food p...

Available Kilocalories and their equivalent servings from the FAO’s Food balance sheets for agricultural year 2011. Serving calculations were based on Canada’s Food Guide serving sizes and USDA guidelines. (PDF)

The amount of food produced, their uses for human food and livestock feed and arable land area under each food group based on FAO 2011 data. (PDF)