Global Food and Environment Institute

We are achieving positive societal and environmental impacts, globally and locally, by delivering ambitious and novel interdisciplinary research and innovation in sustainable food systems, and by training the next generation of food systems leaders through research-led education. We support the design and delivery of the MSc Sustainable Food Systems and Food Security.

Our areas of research reflect global challenges and current cross-disciplinary areas of research strength at the University. They include, but are not limited to:  

• Food Systems for One Health – We bring together researchers whose focus is on the interrelated animal, human, environmental, plant and soil health impacts of food systems. Land use changes, agricultural inputs, antibiotic use, food processing, and dietary choices are key factors that can affect One Health outcomes. Researchers are exploring the impact of the health of environment, public, and animals on global agriculture and food options. One Health and Food System framings encourage us to think about real world challenges in a holistic way, focus on co-benefits and trade-offs, consider equity and justice, embrace complexity and interdisciplinarity. 
• Food Security, Risk and Resilience – We bring together researchers whose interest is in multiple and interacting risks within the food system at multiple scales, inclusive of climate, environmental, geopolitical, economic and other risks. This interdisciplinary network of researchers considers food security in a broad sense, including the security of access to and affordability of safe and nutritious food for individuals and households through to the ways in which food can be an issue of national and international security (that is the ways in which food supply is affected by and weaponised within conflict situations). In these contexts, resilience can also be thought of in many different ways, for example, resilience within households, agricultural production systems, businesses, supply chains, national food systems. This can be both positive and negative, and different views may be held about how it is achieved.
• Sustainable Agri-Food Innovation – We bring together the breadth of researchers who focus on the environmental sustainability of agriculture and food, inclusive of low carbon, nature friendly, biodiverse, low waste, and circular approaches. Across this broad research theme, there is an emphasis on agricultural practice, but the network also recognises that the sustainability of agricultural practice is also connected to wider food system practices and approaches, for example those in food processing, transport, retail, and consumption. Our researchers recognise that innovation can range from the high-tech, engineered, digital and smart/precision-based developments to low-tech, nature-based, traditional and/or indigenous practices, and combinations across this spectrum.
• Ethics and Governance of Food Futures – We bring together researchers who use their research to explore the politics of what and whose agendas are driving food system change and how this change is being governed. This incorporates all levels of governance, from the individual, local and business scale, through to national and international governance. The research engages critically with and actively facilitates debates over the technologies and policies of food systems and explores challenging ethical questions of these.

Transcript: What are the food system challenges our researchers focus on?

This video was commissioned by the Global Food and Environment Institute (GFEI) and funded through Higher Education Innovation Funding.