The take-home messages on forests and food security and nutrition are essentially that:

• Diverse forest and tree-based production systems offer advantages over monocropping systems because of their adaptability and resilience.
• Forest and tree-based production systems most often contribute the diverse nutrient-rich foods that are often in short supply in the diets of the poor.
• There are a multitude of ecosystem services provided by forests and trees that simultaneously support food production, nutrition, sustainability as well as environmental and human health.
• Managing landscapes on a multifunctional basis in a way that integrates food production, biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem services can contribute significantly to global food and nutritional security
• Forests and trees alone will not achieve global food security, but can play a major role: discourse has started to change. Policy reform and implementation to reflect this shifting paradigm now needs to take place.

Authors: Sunderland, T.C.H.; Ickowitz, A.

Subjects: forests, nutrition, food security

Publication type: Magazine Article, Publication

Year: 2021

ISSN: 2516-3817