The Global Food Security Programme unveils the new Partnership for a Sustainable Food Future Centre for Doctoral Training (PSFF-CDT), led by the University of Greenwich.
The CDT will train the next generation of UK food system leaders who will re-shape how we make, transport and consume our food. The CDT aims to bring together the world-leading interdisciplinary research skills and experience of seven leading UK universities, with stakeholders from across the food system, including local and national governments, businesses and civil society.
The PSFF-CDT is launched through the GFS led programme ‘Transforming the UK Food System for Healthy People and a Healthy Environment’, funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI’s) Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF), in partnership with government. The £5 million UKRI investment is being matched by £2 million of additional funding, meaning it will support a total of 62 studentships. Each studentship will include a placement in a food system stakeholder organisation and research projects will integrate the natural and social sciences.
Director of GFS, Dr Riaz Bhunnoo said: “This CDT is a key part of that vision and will deliver the next generation of food system leaders, who will go on to work in government, business and civil society organisations. Our new programme will help transform the UK food system by putting healthy people and a healthy natural environment at its centre.”
The CDT will explore what the UK should eat, produce, manufacture and import, taking into account the complex interactions between health, environment and socioeconomic factors. The interdisciplinary nature of the research and collaboration across disciplines and stakeholders aims to help transform the UK food system.
Henry Dimbleby, Independent Lead of the National Food Strategy, said the CDT announcement comes at an opportune time; “The world is finally waking up to the fact that the global food system represents the mother of all sustainability issues. It is responsible for an estimated 20-30% of total greenhouse gas emissions. It occupies half the world’s habitable land, uses 70% of the freshwater we consume, causes three-quarters of all water pollution, and is the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss. At the same time, treating food related illness is absorbing ever large amounts of capacity of the NHS”.
Dimbleby adds, “we need to train a new generation of leaders to haul us out of this mess, and the CDT in Food Systems looks to do just that. It is a welcome and necessary part of the solution to these deep systemic problems.”