John S. I. Ingram

• BSc MSc PhD
• Master's Student at University of Oxford

The many economic, regulatory and environmental pressures on growing, processing, distributing and retailing UK-produced fresh fruit and vegetables (FF&V) are managed by a complex set of actors before reaching the consumer. Much of this production takes place in the driest parts of the country which are characterised as "water scarce". While physic...

Global challenges associated with a growing demand for food in the face of finite natural resources and climate change have prompted concerns about the sustainability of our current food systems. As formulated by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the four principal domains of sustainable diets are health, economics, society, and the environmen...

This article is based on a session at ASN 2019 entitled "Addressing the Four Domains of Sustainable Food Systems Science (Health, Economics, Society and the Environment): What Will It Take to Harmonize the Evidence to Advance the Field?" A summary of presentations is included. The presentations addressed the 4 principal domains of sustainability de...

Food systems contribute to up to 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions are increasing. Since the emissions vary greatly between different foods, citizens’ choices can make a big difference to climate change. Public engagement events are opportunities to communicate these complex issues: to raise awareness about the impact of citizen...

A programme developed across five UK universities aims to equip graduate professionals with the skills, tools and capabilities to better understand and manage food-system complexity for food security, for the environment and for enterprise.

Addressing the intersection of two important emerging research areas, re-distributed manufacturing (RDM) and the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus, this work combines insights from engineering, business and policy perspectives and explores opportunities and challenges towards a more localized and sustainable food system. Analysis centred on two specifi...

Steering the EU food system towards a sustainability transformation requires a vast and actionable knowledge base available to a range of public and private actors. Few have captured this complexity by assessing food systems from a multi-dimensional and multi-level perspective, which would include (1) nutrition and diet, environmental and economic...

As participants at the Ecosystem Inception Meeting convened by the Global Dairy Platform and held in Chicago in June 2016, we have identified some concepts as central to the study of food systems science. Following the definition developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization for sustainable diets, the food supply needs to provide foods that ar...

We explore the role of agriculture in destabilizing the Earth system at the planetary scale, through examining nine planetary boundaries, or "safe limits": land-system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity, climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, and introduction o...

Although policymakers and scientists are increasingly embracing the food system perspective, it has been poorly reflected in institutional terms. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question as to what forms of governance are most appropriate to govern food systems in a more holistic way. The article presents a diagnostic framework consisting...

There is an urgent need to train a cohort of professionals who can address and resolve the increasing number of fundamental failings in the global food system. The solutions to these systemic failings go far beyond the production of food, and are embedded within broad political, economic, business, social, cultural and environmental contexts. The c...

Malnutrition is the new normal. Addressing it will require changes across the entire food system, says John Ingram.

This scientific assessment report on resource efficiency has been produced by the UN Environment’s International Resource Panel in response to a commission in June 2015 by the German Government, as an outcome of the G7 Summit meeting in Schloss Elmau. The report is based on the core work of the International Resource Panel, and of other internation...

This paper defines the research agenda of the SUSFANS project, describes its history and its potential societal impacts. It contributes to balanced and encompassing views on how to strengthen food and nutrition security outcomes in the EU and how to improve the performance of the food system in the EU from the perspective of social, environmental a...

Global food systems have radically changed over the last 50 years. Food production has more than doubled, diets have become more varied (and often more energy-intense) satisfying people’s preferences in terms of form, taste and quality, and numerous local, national and multi-national food-related enterprises have emerged providing livelihoods for m...

The Local Nexus Network is addressing the intersection of two important emerging research areas, re-distributed manufacturing and the food-energy-water nexus. It is an on-going initiative which aims to develop an evidence-based comprehensive research agenda and foster an inclusive community of researchers and stakeholders for sustainable local food...

Sustainability considerations have been absent from most food security assessments conducted to date, despite the tremendous economic, environmental, and social implications of meeting accelerating food demand in the face of water shortages and climate change. In addition, previous food security work has generally focused only on achieving adequate...

With limited global resources, and in the face of environmental changes, meeting future food security challenges will first require a shift in thinking from just ‘producing food’ (and other sectoral interests) to ‘food systems.’ Solutions will need to be applied at local and regional levels, but still be interlinked through dialogue and alliances b...

Plant science has an important part to play in meeting the global food security challenge. But, advances will be most effective if better coupled with agronomic science and the broader food security agenda.

Nearly all countries in the world today are burdened with malnutrition, manifesting as undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and/or overweight and obesity. Despite some progress, efforts to alleviate malnutrition are hampered by a shortage in number, skills, and geographic coverage, of a workforce for nutrition. Here, we report the findings o...

This paper defines the research agenda of the SUSFANS project. It aims to contribute to balanced and encompassing views on how to strengthen food and nutrition security outcomes in the EU and how to improve the performance of the food system in the EU from the perspective of social, environmental and economic sustainability. The research is led by...

The UNEP International Resource Panel has the objective to evaluate the current and projected use of natural resources and as well as to identify opportunities for improvements, using a food systems approach. These opportunities will probably not only include more technical and process oriented opportunities as typically identified with a LCA-appro...

This report explores the critical role of food systems in providing for a then new concept: “sustainable nutrition security” –explicit consideration of both sustainability and nutrition outcomes when assessing the impact of climate change, extreme events, and resource scarcity on the ability of food production systems to meet accelerating demand.

This paper examines the development and use of scenarios as an approach to guide action in multi-level, multi-actor adaptation contexts such as food security under climate change. Three challenges arehighlighted: (1) ensuring the appropriate scope for action; (2) moving beyond intervention-based decision guidance; and (3) developing long-term share...

This chapter examines the interactions between food production and land use in the context of how a future global population of another 2-3 billion over the next 50 years can all be fed to deliver f ood security for all. Increased crop production in the last 70 years has occurred as a result of both expansion of c ropland (altering natural ecosyste...

This paper examines the development and use of scenarios as an approach to guide action in multi-level, multi-actor adaptation contexts such as food security under climate change. Three challenges are highlighted: (1) ensuring the appropriate scope for action; (2) moving beyond intervention-based decision guidance; and (3) developing long-term shar...

Tipping points and nudges are favoured metaphors of politicians seeking to make sense of complex topics. Food security is possibly the first major challenge for tipping points, combining the politics of population growth, diet, and the globalisation of food production and distribution with the limitations of soil, water, land use availability, and...

The rise of food security up international political, societal and academic agendas has led to increasing interest in novel means of improving primary food production and reducing waste. There are however, also many ‘post-farm gate’ activities that are critical to food security, including processing, packaging, distributing, retailing, cooking and...

Increasing concerns about global environmental change and food security have focused attention on the need for environmentally sustainable agriculture. This is agriculture that makes efficient use of natural resources and does not degrade the environmental systems that underpin it, or deplete natural capital stocks. We convened a group of 29 'pract...

There is growing recognition that humans are faced with a critical and narrowing window of opportunity to halt or reverse some of the key indicators involved in the environmental crisis. Given human activities’ scale and impact, as well as the overly narrow perspectives of environmental research's dominant natural sciences, a major effort is necess...

Food systems contribute 19%–29% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, releasing 9,800–16,900 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2008. Agricultural production, including indirect emissions associated with land-cover change, contributes 80%–86% of total food system emissions, with significant regional variation. The...

The Earth system is an integrated, self-regulating system under increasing pressure from anthropogenic transformation. The Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP), which was established by the international global environmental change research programs (i.e., DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP) facilitates the study of this system in order to understa...

Food is fundamental to human wellbeing and development. Increased food production remains a cornerstone strategy in the effort to alleviate global food insecurity. But despite the fact that global food production over the past half century has kept ahead of demand, today around one billion people do not have enough to eat, and a further billion lac...

Agriculture and food security are key sectors for intervention under climate change. Agricultural production is highly vulnerable even to 2C (low-end) predictions for global mean temperatures in 2100, with major implications for rural poverty and for both rural and urban food security. Agriculture also presents untapped opportunities for mitigation...

There is growing concern that satisfying societal demand for food over coming decades will be increasingly challenging. Much of the debate centres on increasing food production which has always been–and remains–an important strategy to alleviate food insecurity. However, despite the fact that more than enough food is currently produced per capita t...

There is a growing concern that Global environmental change (GEC) will exacerbate the stress on Southern African food systems leading to increasing food insecurity, which is signified by rising levels of chronic and severe malnutrition and rates of stunting in children. The situation is further exacerbated by insufficient understanding on how the r...

The Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) was established in 2001 by four global environmental change (GEC) research programmes: DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP. ESSP facilitates the study of the Earth's environment as an integrated system in order to understand how and why it is changing, and to explore the implications of these changes for glob...

Most research linking global environmental change and food security focuses solely on agriculture: either the impact of climate change on agricultural production, or the impact of agriculture on the environment, e.g. on land use, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and/or biodiversity. Important though food production is, many other factors also ne...

While many studies have demonstrated the sensitivities of plants and of crop yield to a changing climate, a major challenge for the agricultural research community is to relate these findings to the broader societal concern with food security. This paper reviews the direct effects of climate on both crop growth and yield and on plant pests and path...

Many reasons are being advanced for the current ‘food crisis’ including financial speculation, increased demand for grains, export bans on selected foodstuffs, inadequate grain stocks, higher oil prices, poor harvests and the use of crop lands for the production of biofuels. This paper reviews the present knowledge of recorded impacts of climate ch...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Societal concern is growing about the consequences of climate change for food systems and, in a number of regions, for food security. There is also concern that meeting the rising demand for food is leading to environmental degradation thereby exacerbating factors in part responsible for climate change, and further undermining the food systems upon...

Social, economic and political factors are increasing food insecurity in the Indo-Gangetic Plain(IGP). Changes in the environment (Global Environmental Change, GEC) are further complicating what is already a food insecure situation for many. The technical and policy interventions required to enhance the region’s food security need to take account o...

A three-year consultation and planning exercise identified the need for, and necessary components of, an integrated research endeavour on the links between Caribbean food security and GEC. The exercise, organised by the international research project “Global Environmental Change and Food Systems” (GECAFS), involved a diverse group of regional resea...

Dynamic interactions between and within the biogeophysical and human environments lead to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, resulting in food systems that underpin food security. Food systems encompass food availability (production, distribution and exchange), food access (affordability, allocation and p...

The Indo-Gangetic plain (IGP; including regions of Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh) is generally characterised by fertile soils, favourable climate and an abundant supply of water. Nevertheless, the challenge of increasing food production in the IGP in line with demand grows ever greater; any perturbation in agriculture will considerably aff...

Global environmental change (GEC) is a consequence of a range of human activities and includes elements such as increasing concentrations of gases in the atmosphere, climate variation and change, rising sea level, loss of biodiversity, and changes in water and nitrogen cycling. Crop production is both affected by and contributes to GEC. Estimates o...

The increasing global demand for food will be met chiefly by increased intensification of production. For crops, this will be achieved largely by increased yields per area with a smaller contribution from an increased number of crops grown in a seasonal cycle. Production systems show a spectrum of intensification practices characterised by varying...

GECAFS (Global Environmental Change and Food Systems - www.gecafs.org) is a Joint Project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). It is a new, international research programme involving a wide range...

The rapidly growing scientific literature on various aspects of carbon storage in soils has given rise to the introduction of several terms when discussing the amounts of carbon that are, or could be, stored in soils. The term “carbon sequestration potential”, in particular, is used with different meanings, sometimes referring to what might be poss...

Production of food and forest products will need to increase to meet the world’s projected demand. This challenge can be met by either extensification or intensification but, with little new land available for agriculture in many regions of rapid population growth, intensification will be pre-eminent. Global, average cereal yields will need to rise...

Global change encompasses changes in atmospheric composition, climate and climate variability, and land cover and land use. The occurrence of these changes and their interactive effects on biological systems are worldwide; thus, an effective global change research and impact assessment program must be based on international and interdisciplinary re...

The structural framework of soil mediates all soil processes, at all relevant scales. The spatio‐temporal heterogeneity prevalent in most soils underpins the majority of biological diversity in soil, providing refuge sites for prey against predator, flow paths for biota to move, or be moved, and localized pools of substrate for biota to multiply. J...

Nairobi, Kenya September 1997.

The ability to feed the world's rapidly growing population would be substantially achieved by reducing the “yield gap”, ie. by improving the management of agroecosystems to yield crops nearer to their maximum physiological potential. An enhanced integrated research effort is therefore needed to determine the relationships between potential yield an...

The Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems Core Project of IGBP has launched a series of international research networks addressing the effects of global change on seven crops of major worldwide importance. The rationale, objectives and modus operandum of the GCTE Crop Networks are described. Results from the GCTE Rice Network model comparisons a...

This major new book presents a collection of essays by leading authorities who address the current state of knowledge. The chapters bring together the early results of an international scientific research program designed to address what will happen to our ability to produce food and fiber, and what effects there will be on biological diversity und...

Tropical forest felling can be for the purpose of traditional shifting cultivation, after which forest is re-established, or for permanent land-use change, which is defined as deforestation. Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in tropical deforestation caused by slash-and-burn clearing for the establishment of more permanent agriculture, p...

The Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) Core Project of IGBP includes a Task aimed at determining the effects of global change on soil organic matter (T3.3.1). This paper describes the rationale, structure and objectives of GCTE, and in particular those of Task 3.3.1. The paper also introduces the GCTE soil organic matter research netwo...

We undertake a synthesis of the most relevant results from the presentations at the meeting Plant-Soil Carbon Below-Ground: The Effects of Elevated CO2 (Oxford-UK, September 1995), many of which are published in this Special Issue. Below-ground responses to elevated [CO2] are important because the capacity of soils for long-term carbon sequestratio...

We present a framework for integrating GCTE's research programme based on three interacting axes-time, space and applicability. We use the contributed papers from the First GCTE Science Conference to undertake an initial integration of GCTE-type research using this three-axis structure. We assess where progress in being made, where progress is like...

Soil, surface and deep ocean waters and sediments are major reservoirs of organic carbon, accumulated over long periods of time. Annual rates of mineralisation are typically less than 1% of the reservoir size but, because of their large mass, a small change in flux rate can significantly affect the global carbon budget (IPCC, 1995). Detection of sm...

Introduces soil fertility as a component of sustainable agriculture, establishing the context for the detailed analyses of the biological basis of soil fertility presented in the rest of the chapters. It outlines the concept of sustainability in agriculture, briefly discusses the reasons for the current interest in it, and suggests components of a...

There have been a number of meetings and publications on soils and global change in the last few years (Anderson, 1992; Scharpenseel et al., 1990; Bouwman, 1990; Arnold et al., 1990). In continuing further with this work, we ought to bear in mind that the study of soil has been changing rapidly over the last decade or so. Soil science used to be se...

The Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems project was set up by the IGBP with the objectives of predicting the effects of changes in climate, atmospheric composition and land use on terrestrial ecosystems, as well as of feedbacks to the atmosphere and the physical climate system. The present document takes the previously laid-out strategic resea...

The Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP 1) was launched at the Amsterdam Conference in 2001 and has brought together the four international global change research Programmes: DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP. As a precursor to ESSP (and before DIVERSITAS was re-launched in 2001), IGBP, IHDP and WCRP had already been collaborating more closely by...