22 December 2021
Chatham House report on implications of COVID 19 for the UK. Please specially have a look at Figure 4 (origins of foods coming into the UK BY COMMODITY), Figure 13 on the impacts and responses to COVID across a few activity areas.
Paper on ‘peak meat’ focused on testing if there’s a point at which improvements in GDP per capita are no longer associated with greater meat consumption. In other words, in a world of increasing GDP, when might meat consumption peak? Good for their review of the trends that came out of it.
90% of the $540bn in global subsidies given to farmers every year are “harmful” – FAO report on repurposing agricultural support. Good data sets and analysis and an updated estimate of past and current agricultural producer support for 88 countries, projected up until 2030. Related – this other report on using agricultural support for land restoration, using data from Africa, Asia and Latin America on subsidies for low-carbon agricultural techniques.
The history of the shipping container – because what is a container but a very small part of a cable. An interview with Marc Levinson, an author of a book on containers. See specially for the dependence on recycling (corollary – the pallets in global supply chain), different charges on services by ship lines, and how freight transport is arranged (connect with just-in-time logistics).
~ 3 billion people have never used the internet. This is AFTER the Covid connectivity boost. Companies are spending billions to better connect continents with submarine cables. Notable example: Meta commissioned NEC Corporation to build the world’s highest capacity submarine cable between North America and Europe, capable of carrying 500 terabits per second. You know, connecting areas that definitely DON’T suffer from connectivity. So it’s going really well to cover the connectivity chasm -_- (consider – nearly every single ‘technological innovation’ in our space seems to assume connectivity).
3or5 is a monthly mailing on things in the food systems space that I find interesting
saherhasnain 