DFID-Knowfor: Food Security Strategy

This project involves research on food security to identify the contributions forests make to diverse and nutritious diets and how they should be considered in relation to agriculture systems.

Food and nutritional security is an increasingly important aspect of international (and particularly tropical) forestry research because the majority of the world’s remaining biodiversity exists outside of protected areas - often in complex, multi-functional landscapes, particularly in the tropics.

They are also important components of forestry research because large numbers of the world’s estimated 900 million food-insecure people live in, or adjacent to, tropical forests.

Recognizing that it was time for a paradigm shift, away from one that emphasized trade-offs between food security and conservation, to one which acknowledges the essential contribution that forests make to the sustainability of the world’s nutritionally balanced food and agriculture systems, this project is contributing to discourse and knowledge on the interplay between forests, nutrition and food security.