Our mission is to create synergies across the natural and social sciences for excellent research and global public good. This way, we work to transform research and practice to enable equitable, food secure and sustainable futures.
Our initial focus
Today, humankind faces unprecedented global challenges which demand accelerated change. By 2050 the global population will have risen from two billion to nine billion in just a little over a century. A changing climate and water scarcity threaten agricultural output in many areas across the globe. Diseases and pests are migrating and evolving. Consumer demand and dietary choices are changing rapidly. Food insecurity can drive political instability and human migration.
Improved productivity needs to be consistent – not only in field trials, but in farmers’ everyday lived realities.
The second United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 of “zero hunger” could not be clearer or more challenging. In all likelihood, to achieve this goal, we will need to produce more food, more sustainably and change our dietary patterns. We need to do this under severe constraints on the land area that can be given over to farming and in a changing climate. Crops need to be more productive and diets more nutritious, even within more variable growing conditions caused by climate change. Improved productivity needs to be consistent – not only in field trials, but in farmers’ everyday lived realities. All of this needs to be achieved within an increasingly complex global food system.
Our core values
- Transdisciplinarity – a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond disciplinary perspectives
- Excellence – a focus on the very best transdisciplinary research with the greatest impact
- Inclusivity – building equitable partnerships in our research and ensuring equitable impact, with specific attention to the disadvantaged
- Co–production – engaging respectfully with diverse stakeholders is integral to the conduct of our research, not an endpoint
- Openness – building trust through nurturing and encouraging diverse perspectives and questions
- Empowerment – enabling voice and agency through strengthening capacity, resilience, skills and knowledge
- Tenacity – in addressing systemic issues that hinder the application of technology in low income settings
Strategies
- Partnership – we will build strong, equitable partnerships – across the Norwich research hub and with international development agencies, research institutions and research user organisations.
- Focus – we will focus on a limited number of areas for maximum impact. In the first instance, this focus will be on our contribution to a sustainable global food system through identifying, developing and understanding processes involved in the equitable use of new agricultural technologies.
- Foresight – our research will be futures-focussed – with research-fed scenarios for future climatic conditions, biotic stresses, farmer preferences, consumer demand and market evolution.
- Dialogue – we will inform public discourse on sustainable food systems around topics such as biotechnology, dietary change, and the role of smallholder farming.
- Diversity – we will apply an intersectional lens across our research and engagement to maintain diversity in our understanding, practice and impacts.
Funding
The NISD is generously funded by the John Innes Foundation
