Research Guides: Food Systems: Tools and Data

Featured New Resource

Food Systems Dashboard
It combines data from multiple sources to give users a complete view of food systems. Users can compare components of food systems across countries and regions. They can also identify and prioritize ways to sustainably improve diets and nutrition in their food systems.

Data Resources

Our World in Data
Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. Open access, open source. Subscription to receive updates available.
World Resources Institute: Food section
Publications, maps, and data on food: supporting agriculture, environment, and sustainable development.
Food Waste Data
From ReFED, a multi-stakeholder nonprofit, which takes a data-driven approach to move the food system from acting on instinct to insights to solve our national food waste problem.
Data Planet
A collection of U.S. and international datasets sourced from over 90 governmental, commercial, and private organizations. Agriculture and Food is one of the major subject categories in which data is provided. NetID login required.

Other Tools

Food Systems Finance Resource Center
"Outlines development finance tools that can be used to support local food systems, such as bonds, tax increment finance, tax credits, revolving loan funds, and other tools."
Growing Food Connections
"The project builds the capacity of local governments and their partners to create, implement and sustain food system plans and policies that simultaneously promote access to healthy, affordable and culturally acceptable food and foster a viable agricultural sector in their communities." Includes a food policy database, webinars & training courses, and other tools.
Rural Health Information Hub
Includes a wide range of information on rural health including a Rural Food Access Toolkit and other resources related to food systems, food insecurity, healthy food, and more.

Featured Articles and Journals

Environmental impacts of food production

This article focuses on the environmental impacts of food. Ensuring everyone in the world has access to a nutritious diet in a sustainable way is one of the greatest challenges we face. We cover the human aspects of food and nutrition in various entries, including hunger and undernourishment, micronutrient deficiency, food per person, diet compositions and obesity.

Creating a Sustainable Food Future

The report offers a five-course menu of solutions to ensure we can feed 10 billion people by 2050 without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. Intensive research and modeling examining the nexus of the food system, economic development, and the environment show why each of the 22 items on the menu is important and quantifies how far each solution can get us. This site presents text from the Synthesis Report, with download links to full chapters from the complete report.

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
A journal publishing peer-reviewed articles on topics related to sustainably achieving global food security.
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
A peer-reviewed, transdisciplinary journal focused solely on food and farming-related community development.