Meeting Global Food Security Challenges with Innovation

screen shot 2020 04 01 at 2 54 54 pm Hydropbonic greenhouse

Agricultural and development economist Christopher B. Barrett, a visiting scholar with the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), gave a lecture at Stanford on food systems advances over the past 50 years that have promoted unprecedented reduction globally in poverty and hunger, averted considerable deforestation, and broadly improved lives, livelihoods and environments in much of the world (watch video here or below).

In that lecture, and a related interview with FSE Senior Fellow Roz Naylor (watch video here or below), Barrett shared perspectives on the reasons why, despite advances, those systems increasingly fail large communities in environmental, health, and increasingly in economic terms and appear ill-suited to cope with inevitable further changes in climate, incomes, and population over the coming 50 years. Barrett explored the new generation of innovations underway that must overcome a host of scientific and socioeconomic obstacles.