Farm to Fork: Balancing the Needs for Sustainable Food Production and Food for Health Promotion

Food is an essential human need underpinning health and wellbeing, while also having the potential to support environmental sustainability. In the past several decades, an emphasis on maximising yield though improved production practices has enhanced human lives in several respects, including by reducing hunger, infant and child mortality and poverty, and raising life expectancy [1,2]. Despite these advances, a downside of these practices is a shift to diets that are calorie-dense, processed and utilise animal products [3,4]. Food production is also a major contributor to environmental degradation [5,6]. Thus, food needs to be produced in a way that is not only healthy and nutritious but also environmentally sustainable. For example, during the period 2007–2016, total net greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use accounted for 23% of total net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions [7]. Land management and land use change also contributes to biodiversity loss [8], freshwater use [2] and soil degradation [9], which all affect land productivity and food security