It is estimated that about one-quarter of the world's food is traded in international markets, with the majority of it supplied by 10 countries. A recent op-ed published in the journal Science, titled "Eating the Earth," warned that the world's food trade, a lifeline for billions of the world's population, is burgeoning but fraught with vulnerabilities.

From the perspective of the concept of virtual water, the water used in production, importing food is equivalent to importing water.

Biodiversity loss, climate change, and land degradation are intertwined planetary-level challenges. Following the Biodiversity COP in Colombia in October and the Azerbaijan COP on climate change in November, the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from December 2 to 13, 2024.

A team of international scientists analyzed the 2023 carbon budget based on global vegetation models and satellite data, suggesting that extreme heat waves could be caused by massive wildfires and severe droughts, which may be due to a decline in the carbon storage capacity of terrestrial ecosystems.

An archived video of the "Symposium with Dr. Cary Fowler, 2024 World Food Prize Laureate – Dr. Fowler’s Journey to Preserve Genetic Diversity and New Mission for Africa’s Adapted Crops and Soils," held on Friday, October 11, has been released.

The 2024 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report highlights how developing and maintaining water security and equitable access to water services, especially access to innovations that allow efficient use of water, is essential to ensuring peace and prosperity for all.

In order to maintain food security in the face of climate change, it is necessary to accelerate the development of resilient crops. A review article published in 2021 emphasized the need to improve the accuracy of trait selection using the latest technologies, strengthen investment in research to elucidate the mechanism of stress tolerance in underutilized crops, and improve information on genetic diversity in order to accelerate resilient crop breeding. On November 22, 2024, the JIRCAS International Symposium 2024 will discuss the role of resilient genetic resources in the age of global boiling.

In Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, Dr. Rockström, a proponent of the planetary boundaries concept, reviewed the genealogy of Earth system science that led to the development of the Planetary Boundaries concept into various scientific disciplines.

We will hold a seminar to deepen our understanding of the future of global food supply and demand by inviting two government officials and researchers who have prepared med- to long-term global food supply and demand forecasts with a special focus on the U.S. agricultural commodity markets by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.