In this series, we're sitting down with Swette Center affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation, and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Faculty Profiles page.
Read on for an interview with Jianguo (Jingle) Wu, Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the School of Life Sciences and the School of Sustainability.
How did you become interested in food systems?
I have always been interested in food systems because as humans, in order to survive, we have to eat, right? I used to be a farmer, and I was a herder for a while before I went to college. Now, I’m an ecologist and sustainability scientist, and food security plays a critical role in my research on ecology and landscape sustainability. Food systems are a very important part of making our landscapes sustainable. These regions must have the viable environmental, social, and economic components to be resilient. I think that food, water, and shelter are the basic materials for a good life that must be insured.
Can you share a glimpse of your current research and how it applies to food systems transformation?
My main research interests have focused on three areas. Number one is landscape ecology, which is the study of the relationship between landscape patterning and the ecological processes, including biodiversity and ecosystem functions. A landscape is often a mosaic of agricultural land, urban land, and water bodies. From an ecological perspective, this includes not only multiple interacting ecosystems, but also humans and their activities. From that angle, I think my research has always had something to do with food systems.
The second area I've been focusing on is urban ecology. Urban ecology is a study of the biodiversity, ecosystem structure, functions and ecosystem services in the urban landscape. My students and I have been studying the Phoenix urban regional landscape since 1997, looking at how biodiversity, ecosystem function, and agricultural lands have changed over the years.
The third area, which is my most active research area at this moment, is landscape sustainability science. With landscape sustainability science, the goal is to consider all the things in a regional area - as large as the Southwest or as small as the Phoenix metropolitan region in which you have agriculture, industrial activities, university campuses, and all sorts of things. Ecosystems are not islands; they come together to form regional landscapes. Landscape sustainability is to understand what elements we should include in our landscapes. How much farmland should we have? Where should we grow food? This encourages urban agriculture. Urban agriculture sounds like an oxymoron, but urban and rural areas need to be integrated in order to achieve regional sustainability. We need oxymoron solutions for sustainability. That's what sustainability, to me, is all about. I think we need to take a broader, more comprehensive, holistic approach now, for food systems, for ecology, for everything else.
What’s an innovation in food systems that you're excited about?
To me, the most exciting, innovative thing that is happening in food-related research is a regional landscape approach to food systems sustainability. This approach is beyond agriculture, beyond traditional farming, and beyond site-level thinking. We need to have agriculture not just only in farmland. We need farmland within cities. We need food production in our backyards - they’re all green spaces. Green spaces can reduce temperature, purify air, and purify water. They provide many different ecosystem services. If we make our urban green spaces also produce food, we can achieve so many goals simultaneously. This is the multi-functionality of our landscapes. I think this is the most exciting, innovative idea to me. Many people have come to the same conclusion, and we need to scale up our urban agriculture activities, not just in pieces here and there. We need to organize them into a system that serves the entire city and even the entire region. If we do that, then we can satisfy our needs for food and things we consume on a daily basis to a large extent. I think if we can continuously improve regional self-sufficiency, our cities, regions, and indeed the entire world would be more sustainable.
What’s your favorite weeknight meal?
I am not picky about food, so I don’t have one particular meal that I prefer, as long as it is balanced and nutritious. This mindset stems from my childhood, when I was poor and never had the luxury of choosing what to eat. Since then, I have tasted many different kinds of food from around the world, and learnt to appreciate the diverse cultures behind them. I am grateful to have choices today. I really hope that, one day, everyone on this planet will have the freedom to choose their food and access other essential resources for a good life.