Terry Sunderland & Amy Ickowitz recently published an article on ‘Open Access Government’ highlighting the links between forests, food security and nutrition. The take-home messages from this article are:
• Diverse forest and tree-based production systems offer advantages over monocropping systems because of their adaptability and resilience.
• Forest and tree-based production systems most often contribute the diverse nutrient-rich foods that are often in short supply in the diets of the poor.
• There are a multitude of ecosystem services provided by forests and trees that simultaneously support food production, nutrition, sustainability as well as environmental and human health.
• Managing landscapes on a multifunctional basis in a way that integrates food production, biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem services can contribute significantly to global food and nutritional security
• Forests and trees alone will not achieve global food security, but can play a major role: discourse has started to change. Policy reform and implementation to reflect this shifting paradigm now needs to take place.
The full article (p.466-467) is available here.