Mission

Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and the Environment addresses critical global issues of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating vital knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.

What is Food Security?

Food security embraces three important components: the consistent and sufficient availability of safe and nutritious foods; assured access to food through poverty alleviation and household income growth; and the ability of individuals to utilize food effectively within the context of their physical health, water supplies, and sanitation. Food security links health, development, the environment and national security in unique and important ways.

Approach

At FSE's core is an interdisciplinary team of scholars from departments such as economics, political science, biology, civil and environmental engineering, law, earth sciences, medicine, anthropology, education, and history. Faculty collaborate on a set of focused research projects, teaching activities, and direct science and policy advising. FSE is currently engaged in 17 different research projects, and offer courses for graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford interested in issues of hunger, rural development, global resource and environmental degradation, agricultural technology, climate impacts on food security, and agricultural trade and policy.

FSE provides direct science and policy outreach through international development and aid institutions, the international agricultural research centers (CGIAR), the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), environmental non-profit organizations, private sector firms, and other groups that play significant roles in the agricultural development and environment arenas.

Goals

• Design new approaches to solving global hunger and environmental degradation by building an evolving research portfolio and convening an interdisciplinary team of scholars inside and outside of Stanford with relevant scientific, economic, and policy expertise.
• Become the premier destination for undergraduate and graduate students both at Stanford and abroad interested in food and nutrition security, intensive food systems, climate impacts, food-energy linkages, and policy interventions.
• Emerge as the go-to-center for policy advice on issues relating to agricultural technology and development, food security, and environment and climate linkages to agriculture.

Organization

The Center on Food Security and the Environment is a joint center between the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment (Woods). Scholars centrally involved with the center have senior fellow appointments within FSI, Woods, and/or professorial positions within university departments.

FSE Contacts