On September 23, 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched the latest edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO 2020) report with the underlying theme of “Agricultural markets and sustainable development: Global value chains, smallholder farmers and digital innovations”.

On September 15, 2020, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released the 2020 Goalkeepers Report with an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on progress being made around the globe on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the introduction, Bill and Melinda Gates noted that the spillover effect has become devastating and the vaccination rate has been set back about 25 years in about 25 weeks. CEO Mark Suzman calls for the world to unite more than ever to mark COVID-19 in history and rekindle progress towards the SDGs.

On September 10, 2020, the article “Re-Imagining Africa’s Food Future at the Intersection of Agriculture and Conservation” was published on State of the Planet blog of the Earth Institute of Columbia University. The report emphasized the need to find a solution that balances improved food production, reduced climate footprint and conservation of natural capital to achieve resilience and sustainability.

On September 9, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a summary of the new upcoming report “Reaching Zero with Renewables”. It is expected that seven industry and transport sectors (steel, chemicals, cement, aluminum, aviation, shipping, road freight transport) will account for 38% of total CO2 emissions in 2050 unless renewable energy solutions become available. Renewable energy plays a central role in reducing CO2 emissions from these so called hard-to-decarbonise sectors in order to limit global temperature rise at 1.5-degree target.

The paper "The Future(s) of Digital Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems: Analysis of High-Level Policy Documents" was published in the journal Ecosystem Services. Many researchers and policy makers look forward to the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in the current food production through data-based decision making. However, the fact remains that there is no clear vision yet on what the future of digital agriculture will look like, and the article pointed out the need to include ecosystem researchers to contribute to the evaluation of the environmental impacts of digital agriculture.

On September 9, 2020, a group of key global partner organizations of the United Nations led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) jointly announced “United in Science 2020”, a multi-organization high-level compilation of the latest climate science information. With the spread of COVID-19, there is no sign that the progress of climate change has stopped, and the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to increase.

One of the solutions to combat the deficiencies of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals is biofortification. Biofortification, unlike supplement intake and nutrient addition to foods, is an effort to promote intake of micronutrients by making crops with a high content of micronutrients that tend to be deficient in the area. HarvestPlus, one of the pioneers of biofortification, released a updated global map of biofortified staple crops showing that 63 countries have released or tested biofortified varieties as of the end of 2019.

On August 21, 2020, Visual Capitalist, an online publisher on topics such as markets, technology, energy and the global economy, introduced 3D mapping of the largest population density centers. The maps visualize population density in squares, with the height of each bar representing the number of people living in that specific square.

In the August 2020 issue, the Lancet Planet Health published an article entitled " COVID-19 and the future of food systems at the UNFCCC”. The two crises, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, both impact the most vulnerable societies, highlighting the need for a global food systems transformation.