Today's world food systems are centralized around many environmental, economic, and societal challenges. Crises such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine exacerbates the challenges we face. This reveals a need for a more resilient system to feed a growing world population.  

The UN elevated Sustainable Food Systems to the top of the international agenda during the Food System Summit in New York in 2021. In Norway, actors in the national food systems are increasingly judged by their ability to contribute to food security as well as to human and planetary health.  

There is now a broad international consensus that the world's food systems, both local and global, need to go through a “transformation” to meet the UN sustainable development goals, to be able to tackle the current challenges.  

The arena involves all NMBU's seven faculties, as well as various partners from different sectors within research, education and communication.

Through the production and communication of knowledge, the arena works towards building a common and transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability in food systems. The arena works to stimulate transformative change and critical reflection of the current state of the world's food systems.  

The arena supports innovation in food systems thinking across scales from the micro-level (e.g. co-evolution of microbes, animals and food-plants) to the macro-level (e.g. international food trade). Central to the work within the arena is the overall system approach, including a multitude of knowledge producers to cover the whole food system.  

Working between different sectors and across different levels both internally and externally of the university, the arena works within research, education, and communication to reach these goals.

To strengthen the knowledge about sustainable food systems:  

If you have any inquiries about the arena, please contact project leaders Hanne Fjerdinigby Olsen or Ola Westengen.