Jeremy Farr
@jeremyfarr.bsky.social
Research Fellow on future food systems transformations ⚕️🌿 🏦 🌏 and archaeologist of past food systems 🔬🌾🏺
Termites are ecosystem engineers across the tropics
A farmer in Burkina Faso revived an abandoned technique of digging shallow pits, filling them with manure and letting termites tunnel underneath to open the hardpan. Land that had been written off as ...
A forgotten trick with termites and manure transformed drought-ravaged soil across West Africa, proving that revival sometimes comes from the ground up.
spacedaily.com
I wrote this substack today: Godzilla El Niño poses systemic risk to global food security in 2027 j3rsf.substack.com/p/godzilla-e...
Godzilla El Niño poses systemic risk to global food security in 2027
Last night a bushfire set a blaze not too far from Brisbane and made me think, while it’s still in the future, it would be worth quickly sketching something out about how the convergence of El Niño, g...
j3rsf.substack.com
You can't predict the turns this sentence takes. Extreme heat is threatening Italy’s “cheese banks,” where hundreds of thousands of Parmigiano-Reggiano wheels are stored as loan collateral. fortune.com/2026/08/10/i...
Italy's $4.7 billion cheese economy is feeling the heat as climate change threatens its cheese banks that hold Parmigiano wheels as loan collateral | Fortune
Extreme heat is straining the vaults that hold Parmigiano wheels as loan collateral, and economists say the damage runs wider than the vault
fortune.com
Delighted to be a co-author on this research led by my colleague Dr Pradeepa Korale-Gedara. We used a quantitative network analysis as an innovative approach to look at interactions between different parts of food systems, using Australia as a case study 🚜🌦️🥦🍞📈🛒 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Investigating food system interactions using network analyses: A case study of the Australian food system - Food Security
This study evaluates the application of quantitative network analysis as a novel approach to mapping interlinkages and identifying influential drivers within food systems, using Australia as a case st...
link.springer.com
I wrote about how an international spike in thefts and the roll out of AI technologies have made supermarkets a key site for normalising surveillance and data extraction in mundane settings open.substack.com/pub/j3rsf/p/...
Supermarkets, AI, and Societies of Control
Supermarkets are dovetailing technologies of the panopticon with Deleuze's societies of control to create sites of data extraction
open.substack.com
If only this was a genuine demand and not a flimsy pretext for economic coercion 😩 www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Donald Trump hits Australian exports to US with new higher trade tariff over claims of ‘forced labour’
Australia’s trade minister, Don Farrell, says tariff regime is unjustified and inconsistent with free trade agreement with US
theguardian.com
Global markets for food overlwhelmingly benefit high income countries/Global North and create perverse incentives at local levels in lower income countries. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
Healthy diet too expensive for one in three people globally, UN report finds
Global hunger declined for the third year in a row in 2025 but experts call for action to bring down costs of fruit, vegetables and dairy as report shows 2.69bn people can’t afford to eat well
theguardian.com
Day 3 (yesterday) of Building resilient Food Systems at the UN Committee on World Food Security: Precious Phiri brilliantly articulates the worrying pushbacks on the language of human rights in the forum, undoing decades of progress. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GPI...
Why are we here?A call to uphold human rights in food systems negotiations| Precious Phiri(Zimbabwe)
YouTube video by CSMechanism
youtube.com
This paper led by my first masters' student was published yesterday. With a lot of talk about the supermarket duopoly in Australia since 2023, we wanted to look at what major supermarkets mean to people who experience different forms of vulnerability. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
How do supermarkets shape the experience of vulnerable people in Australia's food system? A scoping review
Aims The aim of this scoping review was to synthesise how supermarkets shape health behaviours and nutrition-related outcomes of vulnerable populations in Australia. Methods Five databases were se.....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
🚨 Dangerous, record-smashing heat wave to scorch millions across central to eastern United States, where some 90 million Americans live. Extreme heat warning is in effect.
Dangerous, record-smashing heat wave to scorch millions
A prolonged, dangerous heat wave will intensify across most of the central to eastern U.S. this week, the National Weather Service said.
usatoday.com
Incredibile and dramatic #heatwave in #Europe as seen from space. The #Copernicus #Sentinel3 Land (not air!) Surface Temperatures map of June 24 shows peaks of 55°C in #Spain and over 50°C (in purple) in #France. #climateemergency
A short piece about how infrastructure in the UK will need to adapt to new norms, the perils of individualistic approaches over public ones, and the predictable recalcitrance of the media if the government decide to take action open.substack.com/pub/j3rsf/p/...
Socialising new infrastructure for heat-dome Britain
Extreme heat is a new normal and individual action will not be enough
open.substack.com
I wrote about the co-creation of knowledge by colonial scientists, African technicians, and the tsetse fly during 1920s/30s sleeping sickness epidemics that have contributed to shaping modern fields of epidemiology and public health. 🦟🌿⚕️ www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/epis...
Epistemological Negotiations of “the Fly” and Native Reserves in Colonial Zambia
In former Northern Rhodesia, the case of the Tsetse fly shows how knowledge has been co-created by humans and nonhumans.
environmentandsociety.org
Pleased to be part of this research led by Serafina Stone on the role of community gardens in Brisbane's food system that explores the motivations for participation by members across 4 different gardens - urban gardening is about a lot more than just food. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The role of urban community gardens in the food system in Brisbane, Australia
Urban community gardens are often discussed as part of a suite of measures to enhance food security and promote community and resilience within urban food systems. Some studies have cast doubt on t...
tandfonline.com
A couple of years ago I stumbled across this 1919 intelligence report in the National Archives setting out how Bolshevism was incompatible with Islam. It recomends this report be disseminated to the colonial offices to "counteract.. Bolshevik agitators."
I wrote about the archaeology 🏺of porridge in Africa and what it means for food systems with Alison Crowther. If you're interested in interactions between culture, food, and biogeography, and their evolution over time - give it a skim (open access). www.frontiersin.org/journals/env...
Frontiers | Frontiers of cuisine: persistence and substitution in the evolution of porridges in south Central Africa
Following Haaland's work on “porridge and pot” cuisine and Stahl's “cartographies of taste” as a means of exploring cultural and ecological dynamics, this pa...
frontiersin.org
Supermarkets are consistently undercutting small & independent businesses whilst exploiting workers. Let's make sure everyone has a wage where they can live in dignity and stop the hoarding of wealth by the super rich.
Video of pale fox cub exploring my parents garden in Forest Hill, SE London 🦊
Pale fox cub at my parents place in Forest Hill, SE London. Possibly one for @chrisgpackham.bsky.social
-People die in extreme heat events in the UK every year. Air conditioning is public safety. -People who die in extreme heat events are disproportionately poor, elderly, disabled, urban, or some combination. -Air conditioning is quickly becoming a social justice issue.
"The UK was built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come." New report from the UK's Climate Change Committee @thecccuk.bsky.social.
A Well-Adapted UK - Climate Change Committee
Footnotes have been removed from the HTML version of this report. For the footnoted version of this report,…
theccc.org.uk
A 4-day week on full pay could slash Britain’s obesity levels by giving millions the time they need to ditch bad habits and make healthier choices. It’s essential that local and national governments consider the role that a shorter working week can play in improving the health of our communities.
My colleagues and I did a study on the relationship between working hours and obesity in the OECD. The paper is out for review but our recommendation for a 4 day week being part of a suite of interventions is getting some press 🙂
Experts call for UK four-day week as study links long work hours to obesity
Countries such as US and Mexico that have longer hours also have higher obesity rates, research finds
theguardian.com
The incoming El Niño mentioned at the end of this article - expect to hear a lot more discussion about this in the coming months as the intersecting crisis of US war on Iran and low rainfall feedback into prices. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
UK food prices on track to rise by 50% since start of cost of living crisis
Beef and olive oil costs increase the most as climate and energy shocks drive inflation, research suggests
theguardian.com
Australian privet hawk moth (Psilogramma casuarinae) on my shower screen.
AMOC Collapse Consequences: Atmospheric CO2 Rise by 83ppm & 7C Arctic Cooling & 6C Antarctic Warming In 2012 we had new record minimum in Arctic Sea Ice extent, and after 2015 we had a collapse of Antarctic sea ice. Are these signs?? youtu.be/T_hiFoQSmuU?...
AMOC Collapse Consequence: Atmospheric CO2 Rise by 83ppm & 7C Arctic Cooling & 6C Antarctic Warming
YouTube video by Paul Beckwith
youtu.be
