Achieving global food security whilst reconciling demands on the environment is the greatest challenge faced by mankind. By 2050 at least 9 billion people will need food, and increasing incomes and urbanization will inevitably lead to dietary change. The food security challenge will increasingly encompass the triple burden of malnutrition – undernutrition, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies. The urgency of the issues has led to huge scientific strides forwards, making it difficult to keep up with the rapidly expanding volume of scientific research. The Second International Conference on Global Food Security therefore aims to deliver state-of-the-art analysis, inspiring visions and innovative methods arising from research in a wide range of disciplines.

We aim to better understand behavioral, biophysical, economic, institutional, political, social and technological drivers of current and future global food security. The conference will address the food system activities of processing, distributing and consuming food, as well as food production from crop, livestock, tree, freshwater and marine sources; the availability, access, utilization and stability dimensions of food security; and the synergies and trade-offs between economic, environmental, health and social objectives and outcomes. The conference will thereby range across disciplines and spatiotemporal scales of analysis to span the drivers, activities and outcomes of food systems to encompass both contextualized and holistic treatments of the broad challenge of food security.

Conference Themes

  • Global and local analyses of food security and its drivers
  • Policies to improve local and global food security
  • Sustainable intensification of food production systems
  • Urbanization, food value chains, and the sustainable, secure sourcing of food
  • Competing demands and tradeoffs for land and water resources
  • Technological breakthroughs to help feed 9+ billion
  • Reducing food loss and waste
  • Reducing risks to food production and distribution from climate change
  • Consumer behavior, nutritional security and food assistance programs
  • Business-science cooperation to advance food security
  • The agriculture-nutrition-health nexus