In studying the long-term effects of our diets on fulfillment, Food Systems Transformation Initiative Director Christopher Wharton expects to find a correlation between happiness and plant-based eating due to its health, environmental and other sustainability benefits.

Arizona's agricultural production is headed for a decline, say two ASU sustainability scientists who found – after studying the food-energy-water nexus that governs agriculture in the state – that its yields could drop more than 12 percent per 1 degree Celsius.

A shrinking farming population can be addressed by veterans seeking peaceful employment, asserts "Ground Operations: Battlefields to Farmfields" – a film that fueled a great panel discussion at a recent event hosted by ASU's Food Systems Transformation Initiative.

While enjoying equitably-produced dishes at Maya's Farm in Phoenix, diners at Dinner 2040 – a charette-style event planned by sustainability scientist Joan McGregor – used their diverse backgrounds to discuss key food values and how to better implement them.

Part of the School of Sustainability's 10th anniversary celebration, author and food activist Michael Pollan – named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine – described in his April 2016 Wrigley Lecture how we can fix our broken food system.

ASU's Food Systems Transformation Initiative is collaborating with partners like the Global Youth Innovation Network and the International Fund for Agricultural Development to support a summit on youth agribusiness, leadership and entrepreneurship held in Dakar, Senegal in March 2016.

Two of our FSTI affiliates - Jennifer Hodbod and Hallie Eakin - have published a new paper in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. 'Adapting a social-ecological resilience framework for food systems'  addresses the purpose of applying social-ecological resilience thinking to food systems before going on to distinguish between the resilience of food systems and broader conceptualizations of resilience in social-ecological systems.

Reflecting the breadth of food system issues researched and taught at ASU, the School of Sustainability now offers a 15-credit interdisciplinary Certificate in Food System Sustainability - a comprehensive, sustainability-oriented introduction to food systems for undergraduate students.

Through a collaboration between the ASU Wrigley Institute and Institute for Humanities Research, the Wrigley Lecture Series welcomed physicist, activist and author Vandana Shiva, who spoke about sustainable food challenges in the 21st century.