A feast for Oxford’s food research?

08 May 2012

Wheat

The Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food is getting underway with a call for research proposals, issued this week.

The Programme aims to stimulate research on the food system, including all aspects of the production, processing and consumption of food, as well as their social, economic, environmental and health consequences.

Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, outlined some of the challenges facing food production and distribution.

“Action is needed throughout the food system to increase supply, moderate demand and improve efficiency and governance,” he said. “The problem of hunger, which still affects approximately one billion of the world’s population, persists not because we don’t produce enough food, but because people don’t have economic access to that food,” he added. “One of the greatest challenges of the next few years will be producing more food, more efficiently - while reducing the negative environmental effects - from the same amount of land that we have available now.”

The research call, which went out this week to researchers within the University of Oxford, aims to recruit academics to help fulfil the third of the Programme’s three core aims:

1. To link – virtually and intellectually – all researchers at Oxford who work on the food system or whose work touches on this area.
2. Through workshops and other activities, to connect Oxford researchers with policy makers involved in the food system.
3. To fund interdisciplinary projects to stimulate new research on the food system at Oxford.