A taco of plant-based meat. Courtesy of Impossible Foods

Best of Landscape News 2019: Food

Our pick of this year’s top stories

We’re kicking off the new year – and the new decade – with a look at both the latest and the oldest culinary innovations, from lab-grown meat to Indigenous recipes from Mexico. Also on this week’s menu: a review of over four decades of dietary science and a glance at new strategies to feed a growing population on a warming planet. Here are the most important lessons we’ve learned about food, diets and nutrition over the last 12 months.

Meet the oyster mushroom producer changing urban Ghanaian diets

Award-winning agribusiness entrepreneur Afriyie Obeng-Fosu explains how to grow mushrooms at home using sawdust and other industrial waste.

The gilled mushroom genus Pleurotus is known also as oyster, abalone or tree mushrooms. Suzie's Farm, Flickr
Suzie’s Farm, Flickr

In Mexico, Indigenous recipes are improving backyard farming

Introducing a new cookbook of Indigenous recipes in Mexico’s poorest state, which has reignited pride in tradition, native seeds and sense of place.

Women and their families present their traditional recipes at a community cook-off in Chiapas state, Mexico. Kevin Ferrara, DAI
Kevin Ferrara, DAI

Thought for food: Walter Willett on diet for personal and planetary health

From drawing connections between diet and disease to contextualizing food in climate change, nutritionist Walter Willett reflects on a career devoted to shaping global food choices.

Willett's recommended diet embodied in a meal of vegetables (cauliflower), seeds and plant oils. Courtesy of Caravan
Courtesy of Caravan

Growing proteins for a meatless future

Today’s proteins come primarily from meat – but raising livestock to feed 9.8 billion people won’t be sustainable. One scientist believes he has the answer.

Cereals, nuts and seeds
Marco Verch, Flickr

Lessons for feeding a warming world

As climate change reduces the land’s ability to feed humanity, Saul Morris of GAIN explains why water-intensive crops like avocados could become a thing of the past.

Avocado
Amir Yalon, Flickr

Valentine’s Day Special: Can chocolate survive climate change?

Demand for cacao – the plant from which chocolate is made – is rising rapidly, but it’s also highly vulnerable to both disease and extreme weather.

Marlon del Aguila Guerrero, CIFOR

Growing a green, healthy rice bowl

New methods of growing rice can increase yields by up to 200 percent, while reducing water use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Nutrition survey, DR Congo
Axel Fassio, CIFOR

Kenya’s top young agriculturist on the future of professional farming

The East African nation’s 27-year-old “Mister Agriculture” on why new seasons require new technologies, and how to get youth involved in professional farming.

A professional farmer shows Indigenous seeds in Kenya. Patrick Shepherd, CIFOR
Patrick Shepherd, CIFOR

How to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050

To feed a growing world population, we must reduce deforestation and restore abandoned and unproductive land, says a new report.

Landscape in Kenya
Tim Cronin, CIFOR

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