This month, the University of Cambridge will be profiling research that addresses one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – how to guarantee enough food, fairly, for the world’s rapidly expanding population. What’s more, if you have burning questions that you think we can answer, you can send them to a panel of academics who specialise in research to do with food security.

To get involved, all you have to do is Email your question to research.horizons@admin.cam.ac.uk, preferably adding your name and where you come from. We will put as many questions as we can to the panel and publish the answers in August on our research website, www.cam.ac.uk/research.

A major debate on food security – “Is the future of food GM?” – will also be taking place as part of the University’s Festival of Ideas this autumn. The event, on Saturday, October 22, will look at the challenges and possible solutions to the global food crisis and reopen the debate on whether GM is a natural progression in agriculture, or a case of playing God with nature? The programme will be available from August onwards and can be requested by phoning 01223 766766, or visit: www.cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas.

Global food security is becoming an ever-more pressing issue. The challenge is to ensure affordable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food so that we can ensure that everyone has an active and healthy life.

With rapid global population growth and climate change, there are competing demands for energy, food and water. Food demand is predicted to rise between now and 2050, when the global population is expected to reach 9 billion.

The problem is not just one for the future, however. Even now, with the world’s population close to 6.9 billion, one billion people in developing countries do not have enough food to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, millions more in the developed world struggle with health problems because of an unhealthy diet.

This raises profound questions about how we should deal with the matter of feeding the world’s population. Genetic engineering seems to offer a way of increasing food production, but has been the subject of great controversy both here in Britain and further afield. Even if we can improve the amount of food we produce, however, all sorts of logistical problems affect how best to get it to the people who need it most. Then there are problems to do with making sure people don’t just receive enough food, but have an adequate diet, clean water and good sanitation.

Over the course of July, we will be publishing a series of reports about different University of Cambridge projects which are helping to resolve issues like these. They will be available on the research website, where there is also a new section on food security profiling both recent and older research (HERE). The new articles also appear in the latest issue of the University’s research magazine, Research Horizons.

The projects cover programmes to develop influenza-resistant strains of poultry, “land sparing” schemes to optimise crop yields while conserving natural biodiversity and schemes to manage the control of plant disease.

Other research focuses on deepening our understanding of how plants develop, how they silence invading viruses, and photosynthesis – all aspects of plant life which, if we can gain a better grasp of them, would help breeders to adapt crops so that they can yield more food in different climatic conditions.

Meanwhile, economists and conservationists at the University are working together to find new ways to manage soil in a sustainable fashion, and a host of engineers, geographers, biologists and mathematicians are developing tools which will help us to predict future demands for energy, land and water.

In the introduction to the new issue of Research Horizons, Professor Chris Gilligan, Head of the University’s School of Biological Sciences writes: “Global food security is one of the major challenges that we face in the 21st century.”

“For Cambridge, this is both a challenge and an opportunity to focus and integrate our remarkable research expertise in the natural, clinical and social sciences, coupled with the humanities, to develop tractable solutions for global food security. These must be sustainable, socially equitable and ecologically successful – the so-called ‘doubly-green revolution’.”

For more about food security research at the University of Cambridge, you can visit our theme page now HERE.