Annual Report 2022
We are pleased to share with you our Annual Report 2022, which highlights various research, education, and outreach activities focused on food system transformation.
Dear Colleagues, Partners, Alumni, and Friends:
At the World Food System Center, we work together with members from about 50 research groups in various disciplines to develop ideas and find practical answers to key challenges in our food system. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Over the past ten years, we have come up with several levers and approaches to make our agriculture, food, and diets more sustainable, step-by-step.
Enacting change in the food system is urgent. More and faster steps are needed. Ongoing climate change, soil fertility loss, and conflicts and crises have in- creased the pressure to the food system. For many key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are further away from reaching the targets than we were a few years ago. We have about eight years left to achieve the SDGs, or at least to make remarkable progress. It is, hence, time to quickly bring science into practice to accelerate food system transformation.
We are therefore pleased to have successfully laid the groundwork in 2022 to be able to recently open four calls for interdisciplinary research projects. Together with our partners, we want to explore ways to make food systems more sustainable by improving health and nutrition of food products; applying potential novel technologies; better understanding trade-offs in food systems; and addressing environmental and human health risks.
The results generated from these projects will have direct value for society, policy, and industry. They will be used as a basis in educational and outreach formats bringing various actors of the food system together to discuss targeted actions.
Last year, we celebrated 10+ years of collaborative work at the Center with many public events and exchanges. And looking forward, we plan to further stimulate discussions with research we support. We hope to develop, together with you and with all actors sharing different perspectives on the food system, promising pathways for sustainable food systems.
Robert Finger (Chair) and Martijn Sonnevelt (Executive Director)
