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Agri-food systems (AFS) have been central in the debate on sustainable development. Despite this growing interest in AFS, comprehensive analyses of the scholarly literature are hard to find. Therefore, the present systematic review delineated the contours of this growing research strand and analyzed how it relates to sustainability. A search performed on the Web of Science in January 2020 yielded 1389 documents, and 1289 were selected and underwent bibliometric and topical analyses. The topical analysis was informed by the SAFA (Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems) approach of FAO and structured along four dimensions viz. environment, economy, society and culture, and policy and governance. The review shows an increasing interest in AFS with an exponential increase in publications number. However, the study field is north-biased and dominated by researchers and organizations from developed countries. Moreover, the analysis suggests that while environmental aspects are sufficiently addressed, social, economic, and political ones are generally overlooked. The paper ends by providing directions for future research and listing some topics to be integrated into a comprehensive, multidisciplinary agenda addressing the multifaceted (un)sustainability of AFS. It makes the case for adopting a holistic, 4-P (planet, people, profit, policy) approach in agri-food system studies.

On the sidewalks of Manhattan's Chinatown, you can find street vendors and greengrocers selling bright red litchis in the summer and mustard greens and bok choy no matter the season. The neighborhood supplies more than two hundred distinct varieties of fruits and vegetables that find their way onto the tables of immigrants and other New Yorkers from many walks of life. Chinatown may seem to be a unique ethnic enclave, but it is by no means isolated. It has been shaped by free trade and by American immigration policies that characterize global economic integration. InFrom Farm to Canal Street, Valerie Imbruce tells the story of how Chinatown's food network operates amid-and against the grain of-the global trend to consolidate food production and distribution. Manhattan's Chinatown demonstrates how a local market can influence agricultural practices, food distribution, and consumer decisions on a very broad scale. Imbruce recounts the development of Chinatown's food network to include farmers from multimillion-dollar farms near the Everglades Agricultural Area and tropical \"homegardens\" south of Miami in Florida and small farms in Honduras. Although hunger and nutrition are key drivers of food politics, so are jobs, culture, neighborhood quality, and the environment. Imbruce focuses on these four dimensions and proposes policy prescriptions for the decentralization of food distribution, the support of ethnic food clusters, the encouragement of crop diversity in agriculture, and the cultivation of equity and diversity among agents in food supply chains. Imbruce features farmers and brokers whose life histories illuminate the desires and practices of people working in a niche of the global marketplace. On the sidewalks of Manhattan's Chinatown, you can find street vendors and greengrocers selling bright red litchis in the summer and mustard greens and bok choy no matter the season. The neighborhood supplies more than two hundred distinct varieties of fruits and vegetables that find their way onto the tables of immigrants and other New Yorkers from many walks of life. Chinatown may seem to be a unique ethnic enclave, but it is by no means isolated. It has been shaped by free trade and by American immigration policies that characterize global economic integration. InFrom Farm to Canal Street, Valerie Imbruce tells the story of how Chinatown's food network operates amid-and against the grain of-the global trend to consolidate food production and distribution. Manhattan's Chinatown demonstrates how a local market can influence agricultural practices, food distribution, and consumer decisions on a very broad scale.Imbruce recounts the development of Chinatown's food network to include farmers from multimillion-dollar farms near the Everglades Agricultural Area and tropical \"homegardens\" south of Miami in Florida and small farms in Honduras. Although hunger and nutrition are key drivers of food politics, so are jobs, culture, neighborhood quality, and the environment. Imbruce focuses on these four dimensions and proposes policy prescriptions for the decentralization of food distribution, the support of ethnic food clusters, the encouragement of crop diversity in agriculture, and the cultivation of equity and diversity among agents in food supply chains. Imbruce features farmers and brokers whose life histories illuminate the desires and practices of people working in a niche of the global marketplace.

The agricultural sector faces several difficulties today in ensuring the safety of food supply, including water scarcity. This study presents the design and development of a low-cost and full-featured fog-IoT/AI system targeted towards smallholder farmer communities (SFCs). However, the smallholder community is hesitant to adopt technology-based solutions. There are many overwhelming reasons for this, but the high cost, implementation complexity, and malfunctioning sensors cause inappropriate decisions. The PRIMA INTEL-IRRIS project aims to make digital and innovative agricultural technologies more appealing and available to these communities by advancing the intelligent irrigation “in-the-box” concept. Considered a vital resource, collected data are used to detect anomalies or abnormal behavior, providing information about an occurrence or a node failure. To prevent agro-field data leakage, this paper presents an innovative, smart, and sustainable low-cost irrigation system that employs artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyze anomalies and problems in water usage. The sensor anomaly can be detected using an autoencoder (AE) and a generative adversarial network (GAN). We will feed the autoencoders’ anomaly detection models with time series records from the datasets and replace detected anomalies with the reconstructed outputs. When integrated with an IoT platform, this methodology is a tool for easing the labeling of sensor anomalies and can help create supervised datasets for future research. In addition, anomalies can be corrected by prediction models based on deep learning approaches, applying CNN/BiLSTM architecture. The results show that AEs outperform the GANs, achieving an accuracy of 90%, 95%, and 97% for soil moisture, air temperature, and air humidity, respectively. The proposed system is designed to ensure that the data are of high quality and reliable enough to make sound decisions compared to the existing platforms.

Food waste remains a persistent sustainability challenge for the European Union, revealing how economic development, demographic structures, and educational attainment intersect to shape consumption behavior. Although rising prosperity can enhance efficiency, it often encourages overproduction and habits of abundance that increase food waste. This study investigates the structural drivers behind the variation in per capita food waste across EU member states by examining the combined influences of economic growth, human capital, and population density. Using a cross-country dataset, the analysis integrates factorial methods to identify latent relationships among socioeconomic indicators, a multilayer perceptron to capture nonlinear dependencies, and cluster analysis to classify countries according to shared development and education patterns. The results show that higher income and consumption levels tend to elevate food waste. Nevertheless, this effect is moderated when educational attainment and public awareness are stronger, highlighting the role of knowledge in shaping responsible consumption. The neural network further demonstrates that the relationship between prosperity and waste is not linear but mediated by the cognitive and social capacities of each society. Cluster patterns reveal regional models where sustainability policies and cultural norms contribute to more efficient food management. Overall, the study emphasizes that food waste arises from structural disparities rather than isolated behaviors, offering an evidence-based foundation for integrated EU policies that support more sustainable and equitable resource use.

This essay employs Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s sermon, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life”, as an acute lens through which to assess and impart new meanings to African–American activists’ strivings to reach an ideal state of humanness and communal holism as they fulfilled their personal, political, and spiritual missions in the food realm during the 1960s Civil Rights era and the contemporary food justice movement. Narrative analyses of these Black activists’ personal testimonies convey that their discrete journeys to completeness—what Dr King called the ideal state of humanity in its fullness—were not only facilitated by a divine calling but were also conditioned by the enactment of their Christian faith, particularly in reconciling the affective tolls engendered by their participation in lunch-counter sit-ins and by their quests to help alleviate food insecurity among impoverish populations in the American South. Indeed, when these individuals consciously endeavored to master the three dimensions of a complete life—recognize their agency, honor the interconnectedness of humanity, and seek God’s guidance in doing both—were they able to embody their best selves and demand the realization of a truly democratic nation.

This study aimed to assess the association between food worry and self-rated anxiety and depression during the early phase of COVID-19. We recruited a cross-sectional proportional quota sample of 415 respondents from 15 May through July 2020 in New York State. A validated food access survey instrument was administered to the respondents, capturing demographic information and data on food access issues and self-rated mental health. Multiple logistic regression models were fitted to examine the relationship between food worry, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Of the respondents included in the study, 43.4% were male, and 55.4% were female. Forty-three percent reported high food worry, and 39.5% and 41.2% reported symptoms suggestive of anxiety and depression, respectively. Respondents with high food worry were more likely than respondents with low or no food worry to experience anxiety symptoms (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 4.80; 95% CI: 3.02, 7.62). Likewise, respondents with high food worry had higher odds of reporting depressive symptoms than respondents with low or no food worry (aOR = 3.89; 95% CI: 2.45, 6.18). Identifying the personal and contextual drivers of food worry and mental health outcomes would guide public mental health intervention efforts.

Written by 27 World Bank experts, this book draws on the Bank's unique global capabilities and experience to promote an understanding of key global issues that cannot be solved by any one nation alone in an increasingly interconnected world. It describes the forces that are shaping public and private action to address these issues and highlights the Bank's own work in these areas. Covering four broad themes (global economy, global human development, global environment, and global governance), this comprehensive volume provides an introduction to today's most pressing global issues -- from poverty, conflict, and migration to climate change, international trade, education, health, and corruption. With its straightforward presentation of complex topics, use of real world examples, and suggestions for further reading on-line and in the literature, this unique volume will be an invaluable resource for students in international relations, global business, public policy, international development studies, sociology as well as other interested readers.

Food and agriculture are in the news daily. Stories in the media highlight issues of abundance, deprivation, pleasure, risk, health, community, and identity. Remaking the North American Food System examines the resurgence of interest in rebuilding the links between agricultural production and food consumption as a way to overcome some of the negative implications of industrial and globalizing trends in the food and agricultural system. Written by a diverse group of scholars and practitioners, the chapters in this volume describe the many efforts throughout North America to craft and sustain alternative food systems that can improve social, economic, environmental, and health outcomes. With examples from Puerto Rico to Oregon to Quebec, this volume offers a broad North American perspective attuned to trends toward globalization at the level of markets and governance and shows how globalization affects the specific localities. The contributors make the case that food can no longer be taken for granted or viewed in isolation. Rather, food should be considered in its connection to community vitality, cultural survival, economic development, social justice, environmental quality, ecological integrity, and human health.

The family that owns the company that makes OxyContin is calling a Massachusetts' lawsuit false and misleading. This is the Sackler family's first court response to allegations that individual family members helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic. Attorneys for the Sackler family say the claims must be dismissed. Massachusetts was among the first state government to sue the family as well as the company last year.