The Financial Times explores Africa's potential to shift from a major food importer to an exporter, citing challenges such as low productivity, political instability, and climate change, while also highlighting opportunities, including available arable land and a growing population willing to engage in agriculture. 

A group of campaigners known as Reboot Food has published a manifesto calling for open-source precision fermentation technology to be used widely to transform the food system away from reliance on animal agriculture and free up land for nature restoration. Precision fermentation technology, which is already used to produce insulin and rennet as well as some new food products, could in theory produce all of the world’s protein on an area of land smaller than Greater London, says the manifesto.

International foundations, NGOs and government aid programmes are risking starvation in Africa by promoting “utopian visions of organic peasant agriculture”, according to this viewpoint piece by James Njoroge published by the Genetic Literacy Project. 

In this paper, the authors draw on their experience as agricultural scientists who have worked in Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia to argue that the land-sparing vs land-sharing framework has two major limitations.

This paper sets out a “safe climatic space” for food production and finds that, while climate change could put around one third of global crop and livestock production at risk, keeping to the Paris Agreement could reduce this risk considerably.

This rapid evidence review from CCAFS Low-Emissions Development assesses the performance of agroecological approaches in low- and middle- income countries. Based on over 10,000 studies, it finds that agroecological practices such as farm diversification, agroforestry and organic agriculture can help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in both mitigating and adapting to climate change through their food systems.

This article by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future argues that more emphasis should be placed on legumes - such as soybeans, peanuts, chickpeas, fava beans, lentils and other beans and peas - as a source of dietary protein, for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and for their ability to increase soil fertility through atmospheric nitrogen fixation. It reviews trends in legume production and consumption and identifies challenges and limitations to increasing legume use worldwide.

According to this infographic from the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (an academic institution within the US Department of Defence), acute food insecurity in Africa has increased by 60% from 2019 to 2020. The causes in various regions are conflict, road closures due to COVID-19, flooding, locusts, and hyperinflation. 

On July 16, 2020, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Foresight4Food co-hosted the first of a series of eDialogues on the future of small-scale farming. The first session gave an overview of the challenges smallholders face and opportunities for improvement in yields and standards of living. A video recording and written summary (PDF link) of the event are now available online.