ECOFOODSYSTEMS

Evidence-based transitions towards climate-friendly food systems and diets are essential for sustainable environmental, food security and livelihood outcomes. EcoFoodSystems conducts research activities to enable better decision-making by food systems stakeholders to transition diets of nutritionally marginalised consumers. The EcoFoodSystems project works closely with food systems stakeholders to co-create research outputs that can enable decision-making by our partners to better transition the diets of city region consumers towards diets that are more sustainable, healthier and affordable.

Transitioning to resilient, environmentally sustainable models of production requires overcoming major barriers to scaling at multiple levels (farms, landscapes, national & global value chains). Research and innovation activities are needed to enable scaling of agricultural innovations and evidence-based transitions to climate-resilience food systems across interlinked urban, peri urban and rural communities.

EcoFoodSystems recognises the food systems connectivity between rural hinterlands and city regions as a key nexus for the transition towards more climate-resilient food systems. By 2050, more than two thirds of the world population will be living in urban areas, the majority living in cities.

A rural-urban food systems transition focus is critical to ensuring sustainable rural development in concert with transitioning of food systems in city regions towards more sustainable, resilient, and healthy dietary outcomes. Despite important advances around national scale food system data (e.g. Food System Dashboards), significant gaps remain on how to translate data into actionable information for decision makers, especially at the sub-national level.

The EcoFoodSystems project will place particular emphasis on linking national to sub-national food systems (including data systems for decision-support) in the three countries under study: Colombia, Ethiopia and Vietnam. EcoFoodSystems will demonstrate how to generate sustainable data streams for decision-making that are relevant and actionable on both a national and sub-national scale

Partners

University of Galway

The University of Galway is the lead
applicant in EcoFoodSystems and is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland

Wageningen University & Research

Wageningen University & Research is a public university in Wageningen,
Netherlands, specializing in technical
and engineering subjects and an
important center for life sciences and
agricultural research

Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture

Alliance Bioversity & CIAT delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental
degradation

Rikolto

Rikolto is an international NGO with
more than 40 years’ experience in
partnering with farmer organisations
and food chain stakeholders across
Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America