One of the major current challenges of science and society is to find sustainable solutions that meet the dietary needs of the rapidly growing human population and its increasing standard of living. The United Nations has predicted that the world food demand will rise by 70% by 2050. Current food systems are not sufficient to keep up with this growth, and do not provide appropriate solutions for the diet-related WHO-defined priority diseases that are associated with our ever-increasing standard of living. To provide sustainable and healthy food for the next generations, there is an urgent need to further develop food production. In this course you will learn and discuss how science can feed the world in the coming decades, and become aware that a combined effort of multiple disciplines is required to understand the challenge of future food and think of innovative ways to deal with this challenge. The combination of fundamental sciences and integrated studies on molecular and immunological mechanisms will provide students with a broad perspective on the societal and scientific challenges that await to meet the dietary demands of the future. Students are encouraged to think about how their work contributes to meeting the challenges of future food and will learn to communicate this to a wide audience (both academic and non-academic). Specifically, course content deals with four broad themes, namely: 1) improving crop stress tolerance, 2) alternatives to plant-based food 3) technical innovations in agriculture and 4) food policy and safety. Lectures and assignments will cover these broad themes. For instance, emerging threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health will be covered, but also legislation around food security in The Netherlands, socio-economic aspects of food securityand innovations such as cultured meat (kweekvlees).
