Global food security

Topic description and stories

The task of ensuring affordable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for all is one of the major challenges of the 21st century.

Plant cells, like these in wheat, are surrounded by thick walls where energy is locked up.

Breeding better grasses for food and fuel

17 Jan 2012

Newly discovered family of genes could help us breed grasses with improved properties for food and fuel.

‘Extreme Sleepover #2’ – a night in Ghana’s tropical forest

23 Dec 2011

In the second of a series of reports contributed by Cambridge researchers, zoologist Dr Ben Phalan ventures into a tropical forest to understand the...

Sparing or sharing? Protecting wild species may require growing more food on less land

02 Sep 2011

Separating land for nature and land for crops may be the best way to meet increased food demand with the least impact on wild species.

Food security: your questions answered

31 Aug 2011

Over the past month, the University of Cambridge has been profiling research that addresses one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – how...

Field to fork: safeguarding livestock health

21 Jul 2011

Veterinary research in Cambridge is spearheading a new generation of preventive methods to protect livestock from disease.

The Foreseer tool is based on Sankey diagrams, where the width of each line is proportional to the quantity of resource

Foreseer of future resources

20 Jul 2011

An online tool will help users predict trade-offs between the global commodities of energy, water and land.

Irish tenants are evicted and their homes torn down under the supervision of troops

Whose fault is famine? What the world failed to learn from 1840s Ireland

19 Jul 2011

A new book by a Cambridge University academic revisits one of the worst famines in recorded history. The Irish Famine of the 1840s had terrible...

Farming and the fate of wild nature

19 Jul 2011

As the drive to increase food production gathers pace, conservation scientists suggest that reconciling food security with protecting biodiversity...

In soil we trust

14 Jul 2011

Far from being merely ‘dirt’, soil plays a fundamental role in food production, water availability and biodiversity. A new research programme aims to...