In this Comment, we call for transdisciplinary collaboration and participatory action research to bring back opportunity crops such as bambara nuts, pigeon peas, and amaranth that can diversify people’s diets, restore soils and strengthen resilience. The Comment was led by Kate Schneider Lecy (Arizona State University). It emerged from a workshop in 2024 bringing together diverse researchers and practitioners from across disciplines and areas of expertise. Emilie Vansant and I are grateful to have been part of this initiative – and I was particularly honoured to be given the opportunity to deliver one of the keynotes during the convening. Funding for the workshop was provided by the Sustainable Agrifood Systems programme of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
Read the Comment here:
Agricultural research approaches for crops that nourish by improving nutrition, soil health, resilience and prosperity – Nature Food
Addressing nutrition and climate resilience together requires transdisciplinary participatory action research with clear impact pathways for systems change that starts from the ground up. The concept of ‘crops that nourish’ is proposed here to offer a new mode of pursuing agricultural development. It involves iterative co-creation between farmers and researchers that prioritizes local needs and agency, human health, resilience and sustainability through a focus on opportunity crops.
I presented our work on how to make the way we produce food more sustainable – published in Science in 2024: Joint Environmental and Social Benefits from Diversified Agriculture.” In the paper, we showcase how redesigning farming systems can simultaneously regenerate ecosystems and enhance human well-being.
I hope that our results can inspire new paths toward sustainability. The theme running through the conference was that a just and sustainable future requires the flourishing of both people and the planet. But to transform farming systems, we need new ways of thinking and new structures. Farmers need access to land, credit, training and, above all, community. Yet, there are lessons to be learnt from those places where farmers have managed to overcome structural barriers, such as The Soils, Food and Healthy Communities in Malawi.
We are happy to have supported this work led by Saija Kauppila, analyzing seasonal calendars across various African countries. Her findings highlight the abundance of nutritious vegetables available during what is typically referred to as the “lean season”, demonstrating the potential of both wild and cultivated foods to support dietary diversity year-round. As we develop policies to address seasonal food insecurity, it’s timely that we expand the focus beyond calories to include micronutrients — and promote biodiversity stewardship as a pathway to better nutrition. Thanks to the Alliance of Bioversity International – CIAT for the collaboration! Check out the blog post here.
The Frontiers Planet Prize has been awarded to our publication “Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture” published in April 2024 in Science.
The study was far from a standard research project. It was a very collaborative effort. Together with 58 excellent collaborators, we harmonized data from 2655 farms across 11 countries and 5 continents. All datasets measured how agricultural diversification affects both people and the environment. Our key result is that agricultural diversification works for both people and the environment across many different crops as well as many different countries.
Because our study includes very different contexts from blueberry farming in Canada to smallholder maize in Malawi, oil palm and rubber in Indonesia and winter wheat in Germany, our key result – that agricultural diversification works – can guide transitions towards more sustainable agriculture across the globe.
I led the study together with Prof. Dr. Ingo Grass from the Department of Ecology of Tropical Agricultural Systems at University of Hohenheim. And I feel proud that we persevered to lead the big team of excellent collaborators through a data harmonization effort that seemed almost impossible at first.
The Frontiers Planet Prize comes with 1 million USD and was accepted by third author Dr. Zia Mehrabi, University of Colorado Boulder, at the award ceremony on June 17, 2025 in Villars-Sur-Ollon, Switzerland.
Award ceremony, June 17, 2025. Photo credit: Frontiers Planet Prize
The Frontiers Planet Prize is the world’s biggest prize for transformative, science-based breakthroughs to enable healthy lives on a healthy planet.
A total of three global champions were selected from 19 national champions. The jury of 100 experts is chaired by Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström, Director of the PIK – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a recognized expert in the field of global sustainability and the Earth’s resilience.
Thanks to all collaborators: Ingo Grass, Zia Mehrabi, Olivia M. Smith, Rachel Bezner-Kerr, Jennifer Blesh, Lucas Alejandro Garibaldi, Marney E. Isaac, Christina Kennedy, Hannah Wittman, Péter Batáry, Damayanti Buchori, Rolando Cerda, Julián Chará, David Crowder, Kevin Darras, Kathryn DeMaster, Karina Garcia, Manuel Gómez, David Gonthier, Aidee Guzman, Purnama Hidayat, Juliana Hipólito, Mark Hirons, Lesli Hoey, Dana James, Innocensia John, Andrew Jones, Daniel S. Karp, Yodit Kebede, Carmen Bezner Kerr, Susanna Klassen, Martyna Kotowska, Holger Kreft, Ramiro Llanque, Christian Levers, Diego Lizcano, Adrian Lu, Sidney Madsen, Rosebelly Nunes Marques, Pedro Buss Martins, America Melo, Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong, Elissa M. Olimpi, Jeb. P. Owen, Heiber Pantevez,Matin Qaim, Sarah Redlich, Christoph Scherber, Amber Sciligo, Sieglinde Snapp, William E. Snyder, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Anne Elise Stratton, Joseph M. Taylor, Teja Tscharntke, Vivian Valencia, Cassandra Vogel, Claire Kremen
Link to our paper that won the prize.
Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture
Agricultural simplification continues to expand at the expense of more diverse forms of agriculture. This simplification, for example, in the form of intensively managed monocultures, poses a risk to keeping the world within safe and just Earth system…
The research led by Emilie Vansant and Charlotte Hall as part of our FORESTDIET project has showed that trees can support people’s nutrition in Malawi. This is because trees are an important source of fruits, nuts, seeds, and leaves. Yet despite the rising number of tree planting initiatives in Malawi, many indigenous tree species are still threatened by landscape degradation. This begs the question…
🌳 How can we harness all of this momentum around tree planting to support both indigenous biodiversity and better quality diets? 🌳
This past week, we brought together representatives from over 25 Malawian government and civil society organizations engaged in tree planting projects to tackle this important question.
Together with illustrator/graphic facilitator Mette Jeppesen, we led lively workshops for experts to connect and exchange knowledge around tree planting and landscape restoration. In particular, we discussed challenges and opportunities for protecting and propagating indigenous species – especially those with nutritious foods.
To launch this dialogue, we presented our brand new guidebook, “My Guide to Tree Planting, Featuring Indigenous Edible Species of Malawi”!
The development of the guide was led by Emilie Vansant as part of the TREETOOL project. It was created in close collaboration with Malawian botanists, foresters, and agroecologists. The guide provides technical information that is up-to-date, context-specific, and accessible to non-experts. It includes:
📗 Botanical descriptions of 24 indigenous tree species that provide nutritious foods in Malawi.
📙 A seasonal calendar to track flowering, fruiting, and seed collection phases for these species.
📘 A step-by-step guide to seed procurement, nursery management, and outplanting.
By placing this guide in the hands of practitioners working with farming communities, we aim to broaden the conversation around tree planting to include considerations beyond carbon – and encourage biodiversity stewardship for better nutrition🍊
Thank you to all of our wonderful workshop participants and especially our hosts: Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities (SFHC) and Permaculture Paradise Institute.
We used panel data covering a 10-year period from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) to examine the effects of trees on farms on people’s dietary quality in rural Malawi. We found that having on-farm trees leads to higher and more diverse fruit and vegetable consumption.
Coefficient plots summarizing the regression outputs for models run between trees on farm (binary and species count) and fruit and vegetable consumption (grams per adult male equivalent [AME] per day and diversity of consumption) over the study period (2010–2020) (†<0.1; *<0.05; **<0.01; ***<0.001). Abbreviations: TOF, Trees on Farm; Veg, vegetable.
We assess whether tropical tree plantation expansion and forest regrowth across 18 African countries are associated with local people’s living standards. By combining a recent map that distinguishes tree plantations from regrowth from 2000 to 2012 with multidimensional poverty measures from more than 200,000 households, we find a positive association between people’s living standards and areas where tree plantations have expanded or, to a lesser extent, forest regrowth has occurred.
I am so excited to share at last some of the results from my PhD research on land use and nutrition, published today in Nature Food – Open Access! Here, we show how sourcing food from on-farm trees can benefit people’s diets in rural Malawi.
In countries like Malawi, where most rural households rely on rain-fed agriculture, people’s diets can depend on what crops they grow. Yet, policies designed to improve food security often focus on increasing the productivity of calorie-rich staple grains, which have done little to address the country’s high rates of malnutrition (as far more people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies than hunger).
Trees are an important source of nutrient-dense foods, yet if and how they can support dietary quality remains poorly understood. Through linking tree cover estimates from high-resolution satellite imagery with detailed food consumption data in Malawi, our research evidences how sourcing food directly from trees on farms can support women’s micronutrient adequacy across dry and wet seasons.
For example: Compared to women without food trees, women who sourced food from their own trees had on average 8-15% higher levels of zinc, vitamin A, iron and folate adequacy in the dry season, and 6-12% higher levels of zinc, vitamin A and folate adequacy in the wet season.
To tackle the interconnected problems of climate change, food insecurity, and biodiversity loss, we need solutions that address environmental and human health in tandem. It is clear that trees can and must play a role in such solutions.
