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Sustainable Food Production

Research as part of the Sustainable Food Production theme aims to combine soil health, resilient and productive crops and livestock, novel diagnostics in crop and animal disease surveillance and treatment and predictive modelling to promote resilient, sustainable food production.

York's Sustainable Food Production expertise 

Climate change, carbon cycling and greenhouse gas emissions; participatory research; stakeholder engagement; farm-scale input output analysis; plant-soil microbe interactions; novel crop breeding strategies and high value plant products; microbal ecology in anaerobic digestion; applications of novel DNA sequencing technologies.

Research and facility capability at York

  • Field-scale manipulation
  • Manipulation of soil bio-diversity
  • Controlled environments allowing mesocosm experimentation
  • Metabolomics applied to crops, pathogens, beneficial plant-microbe interactions and soil aggregation
  • Climate manipulation experiments
  • Soil-plant-root interactions

Local Theme Leader

Dr Thorunn Helgason leads the Sustainable Food Production theme.

"The research in this theme aims to develop new, more sustainable ways of producing food which are resilient to the current challenges UK agriculture faces. We have the opportunity to redesign food production systems through interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with stakeholders – it’s an exciting time for AgriFood research at York!"

- Dr Thorunn Helgason, AgriFood at York Local Theme Leader for Sustainable Food Production

Theme highlight project

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Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN)

CECAN is a new national transdisciplinary research hub engaging across sectors to pioneer, test, and promote innovations in policy evaluation in this complex arena and so guide the development of robust, resilient and nimble agricultural policy that will be able to balance competing food, water, energy and environmental needs. Read more about the work of the CECAN centre at the project website.

Funders: ESRC, NERC, BEIS, DEFRA, FSA, and EA

Departments: Biology, Stockholm Environment at York (SEI-Y)