Food security

We strive to address the challenge of feeding the growing human population sustainably without devastating our environment.

• Understanding agricultural azole use, impacts on local water bodies and AMR
  Building an interdisciplinary evidence base in Devon and Bristol.
• Reducing food emissions
  How do we reduce food emissions without unintended consequences on health or wider sustainability?
• Are pollinators the key to healthy diets in Nepal?
  Working together to discover the links between pollinators, climate change and human health in Nepal.
• Guiding policy on oceans’ food production potential
  As an ever-expanding human population creates spiralling demand for food, policymakers are looking to the oceans to help prevent a crisis.
• Strategies of resistance and resilience to food insecurity and environmental change: the informal trading of food in the Caribbean
  In the Turks and Caicos Islands access to food through formal channels is too expensive for large segments on society; relying instead on covert, informal trade for nutritious food.
• Making cities more pollinator-friendly
  As we face an increasingly urban future, we need to protect and cultivate greater biodiversity in our cities for the sake of people and pollinators alike.
• Combating crop-destroying viruses in Africa
  Whether it affects cassava, yam, cocoa, maize or almost anything else, the decimation of Africa’s key crops by vector-borne viruses is deepening poverty and breeding malnutrition.
• Nitrogen in a changing earth system
  Humans are altering the natural nitrogen cycle which is affecting our planet and health, and contributing to climate change.
• Characterising the nature, origins and impact of dissolved organic matter in freshwater ecosystems
  From toxic algal blooms to the mobilisation of pollutants, could understanding the complexities of dissolved organic matter help society tackle environmental decline?
• Cyber security for food security
  Rapid adoption of sensor-driven technology in the food sector requires careful consideration of the cyber security implications for such critical infrastructure.
• Palm oil in nutrition, health and the environment: Perceptions from a sub-Saharan African setting
  We are exploring the misconceptions about the health and ecological impact of palm oil in Cameroon.
• Could disappearing glaciers threaten regional food security?
  A rapidly warming climate means Himalayan Nepal’s vital natural reservoirs are vanishing fast.
• Improving the sustainability of livestock farming
  The global warming effects of livestock are supposedly well established. But actually, it may be a more complex picture than previously assumed.
• Food as a commons: Setting an innovative research and impact agenda for the future of food in the UK
  Thinking of food as a 'commons' in the transition to more bottom-up food systems.

• Connected
  Our experts span all of the University’s Faculties, from human, animal and plant health to social scientists and are strongly connected to practitioners, from Somerset farmers to UK poverty experts to global development agents.
• Successful
  Among our flagship successes is the ongoing characterisation of the wheat genome; we have identified and shared an open database of genetic markers of direct practical use to breeders across the world.
• Fundamental
  We continue to make fundamental advances in understanding plant-soil interactions, plant pathogens and the effect of climate change on plant physiology.