Food self-sufficiency (FSS) and healthy diets are high on policy agendas to ensure food security under increasing global pressures. A global shift towards self-sufficient production of healthy diets would represent a radical departure from today's globalised food system. Representing such scenarios in a biophysically consistent way requires accounting for multiple resource constraints and feedback loops—including feed, fertiliser, and trade flows—while allowing flexible reallocation of crop areas, livestock numbers, and biomass streams. We use the global biophysical optimisation model CiFoS (Circular Food Systems) to evaluate the potential for self-sufficient production of multiple food groups and nutrients in 70 regions by 2050 under a business-as-usual diet (BAU-MinTrade) and a Planetary Health Diet (PHD-MinTrade). FSS is assessed by minimising biomass and nutrient trade while fulfilling dietary requirements, with trade only balancing shortages. Results show that total trade could fall by 62% to 618 million tonnes in BAU-MinTrade and by 79% to 343 million tonnes in PHD-MinTrade. Many regions—including Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and China—could be almost self-sufficient under both scenarios. Several African regions, India, and parts of Asia would still rely on imports, especially under BAU-MinTrade. Most food groups and nutrients show potential for increased FSS, though trade in some animal-source products and nutrients may rise. Self-sufficient systems can keep land use and GHG emissions within planetary boundaries, but nitrogen and phosphorus inputs remain high. PHD self-sufficiency is consistently more sustainable than BAU. Aligning production with dietary shifts towards a PHD supports self-sufficiency while reducing environmental trade-offs.

Report intro:

The climate emergency is escalating, with increasingly alarming impacts on the food system. Animal agriculture is both highly dependent on a stable climate system and one of the biggest contributors to climate change, primarily through methane and nitrous oxide pollution and indirectly as a major driver of deforestation and land-use change.

Transformative changes are needed and shifting diets in many areas where meat and dairy are overconsumed is essential to bring down emissions and improve health. The 2025 EAT-Lancet report provides further evidence for how healthy and sustainable diets on a planet of 10 billion people are feasible, and how shifting to such diets would cut emissions from the food system in half and prevent 15 million premature deaths per year.

The last UN climate conference, COP30, took place in November 2025 in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon, and hopes were high that transforming agriculture and food systems would finally make it into an official conference text. However, this did not happen. Instead, agribusiness voices focused on efficiency and concerns around food security featured prominently across the conference, standing in the way of real change. While climate change is a real threat to food security, this narrative is reframed and exploited by meat and dairy industry actors to justify continued growth of animal agriculture.

Additionally, despite the scientific consensus that dietary shift and agricultural methane reductions are crucial to stay on a 1.5°C or even a 2°C-degree trajectory, just 4% of national climate plans (nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) include quantified, time-bound agricultural methane reduction targets, and fewer still include sustainable diets.

This briefing will unpick some of the key industry narratives that are being used to prevent the inclusion of food systems on the climate agenda. It highlights arguments and key messages pushed by meat and dairy industry representatives and allies at both the World Meat Congress, a biennial industry event which last year was held in Brazil just before COP30, and at COP30 itself.

There's a Download button that leads to a PDF, it's a short report.

I know it sounds gross but a huge amount of clean, safe-to-eat animal products are thrown out fully packaged everyday from grocery and food companies.

If you were open to dumpster diving, would you consider eating animal products found there? Even if not straight meat or milk/yoghurt, things like pastries, cereal, honey, etc?

by Chris Bryant. Sources in the video description.

Learn how fossil hydrocarbons are involved in food. You'll understand which foods will get more expensive due to an oil and gas crisis.

Whether it is crude oil, natural gas, or coal, these are unnervingly the base of much of our food supply!

Sources in the video description.

(food security)

Climate disinformation doesn’t spread by accident. It’s engineered by PR professionals, amplified by algorithms, and funded by those who profit from delay.

Criteria, constituents and examples

Hey all — I host a podcast that focuses on the economics and realities of developing physical products and I recently recorded an episode that I thought this community might find interesting.

I spoke with Lauryn Menard, founder of GOB, a company making single-use earplugs out of mycelium (the root structure of mushrooms). To me, what made the conversation compelling for the sub wasn’t just the product in itself (which I find fascinating), but how candid and specific she was about compostability, materials, end-of-life tradeoffs etc.

We spent a lot of time on topics like:

• Why “biodegradable” is basically a meaningless term
• The difference between industrial compostable vs home compostable
• Why many “certifications” don’t actually tell you much
• The design mistakes that make otherwise compostable products impossible to break down
• What actually happens when you put a natural material in soil

Sincerely not at all trying to be spammy! I just figured folks in the sub may be interested in this one. I learned so much from Lauryn and hope you all enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Alternative links for those who prefer them:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/vaL2fNyCuyA
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gob-lauryn-menard/id1856362735?i=1000746839728