Leading agri-food universities back UN ‘zero hunger’ drive

A Dutch institution has joined forces with four other leading international agri-food universities to help eradicate hunger.

'Zero hunger', the second of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, aims to eradicate hunger in the world by 2030. At the international SDG Conference, held at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands at the end of last month, a group of universities was formed to help achieve the goal by developing new educational and research programmes to transform food systems.

The group, known as the A5, includes Wageningen, the University of California, Davis, Cornell University, China Agricultural University and the University of São Paulo. It will initially focus on educational goals such as staff and student exchange before moving on to joint research.

Crucial to the A5’s longer-term plans is developing the leaders of tomorrow. The Wageningen conference also put much emphasis on this, by incorporating an e-conference, or “foodathon”, which saw more than a hundred students from every continent discussing food issues and presenting their results at a “solutions market”.

matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com