While the environmental case for eating less meat in higher income countries is clear, the health implications of shifting diets towards more plant rich diets is more nuanced, depending on what is being substituted and by whom. This report takes a closer look at plant based meat alternatives – for health, planet, and affordability – and the gives some recommendations.

Could growing animal cells in factories cut meat’s environmental footprint? That is the promise of companies developing cultured meat, and the hope of those advocating for policies and investment to back it. But what could this mean for livestock farmers? Might there be any benefits? What do farmers think about it?

This report presents the ten European country profiles from Green Alliance’s report A new land dividend (May 2024). The report analyses the potential for alternative proteins to substitute meat and dairy and release land for other purposes. The countries profiled are; Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the UK.

This paper models animal-sourced protein to plant-sourced protein ratios within a European circular food system, finding that maintaining the current animal–plant protein share while redesigning the system with circular principles resulted in the largest relative reduction of 44% in land use and 70% in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared with the current food system.

A prominent policy option for carbon sequestration is large-scale tree planting, but the UK is falling far behind on its tree-planting commitments. This report provides an introduction into agroforestry, its benefits for climate and food production, and its role and context in potential futures of the UK agricultural sector.​

This report explores the impacts alternative proteins could have on land use in ten European countries. Under a high innovation scenario, alternative proteins could displace about two thirds of the meat and dairy consumed in Europe by 2050. This would allow the ten studied countries to reduce their reliance on overseas land by 75% and create space for nature recovery and carbon storage.

Recipe for a Liveable Planet is the first comprehensive global roadmap for mitigating the agri-food system’s contributions to climate change. It shows how the agriculture system that produces the world’s food can cut greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to feed the world.

This report was produced after the network’s first 18 months of activities. It sets out the suggested priorities for research and policy that have emerged from our work under six themes. The focus is on the emissions from UK agri-food system, and not the global environmental footprint of UK-based food consumers.

FFCC has consulted on and researched Land Use Frameworks (MLUF) for a number of years. This report sets out how a MLUF “offers the greatest potential to maximise delivery of social, economic and environmental objectives and align resources to provide public value and create a sustainable future.”

Green Alliance outlines four contrasting worldviews on the way forward for food and agriculture, and imagines possible alliances that could be formed based on areas of common ground. It argues that greater alignment between proponents of alternative proteins (‘techno-vegans’) and agroecologists could be a viable path out of stasis for many countries in Europe.

This rough guide is designed to demonstrate why a Multifunctional Land Use Framework could bring benefits for people making decisions about land use, and how it could be implemented. Find the FFCC’s report on multifunctional land use in our reports library.

Agricultural peatlands are the most productive soils in the UK for the cultivation of many food crops, but their use has resulted in a significant emission of greenhouse gases. This multi-author paper looks at the current state of knowledge on UK agricultural peatlands.