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Q&A with Jenny Hodbod

Meet Jenny Hodbod, investigator of land use’s impact on food systems

Please describe your areas of research and expertise that you bring to ASU as a Walton Post-Doctoral Research Fellow.

My research focuses around the key questions of how do we create resilient food systems? How do we increase equity so no one is hungry, while also reducing the footprint of food with respect to climate change and other environmental issues? To try and tackle this huge area, I’m studying a range of new ideas in sustainable agriculture and also current barriers to such new methods.

Tell us about your journey and what brought you to us.

My undergraduate degree is in environmental geoscience and during college, I was fascinated by environmental change, but realized I was also particularly interested in the social elements that my degree was missing. I wanted to explore the social aspects of sustainability and keep an interdisciplinary perspective, so I applied for graduate school at the University of East Anglia in the UK where I eventually completed my master’s and PhD within the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. I researched biofuel expansion and the impacts on social-ecological systems in Ethiopia. After completing my PhD in July 2013, I moved to Arizona where I’m continuing my interdisciplinary work here at the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives.

What challenge(s) are you addressing with sustainability solutions?

Food is a particularly key sustainability challenge – it’s a physiological necessity for us all and yet we’ve established such large and complex food systems that we’re degrading the resource base, making ourselves more vulnerable to climate change and still not feeding everyone equitably. What’s more, agriculture and food are responsible for a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions, and the challenge is in how to produce enough food for a growing population with changing tastes, distribute it equally to alleviate hunger, and do this while reducing emissions from various elements of the food system such as production, processing, distribution and waste. It’s not a small task, but it’s one I’m excited about contributing too!

How do you see your work being able to scale globally or have global impact?

There’s huge potential for this to have global impact, as food systems are now globalized networks that link producers and consumers. I’m continuing my work in developing countries, focusing more on the equity element and increasing sustainable food production and distribution, but those are also issues here at home, and so there are lessons to be learned for Phoenix and the U.S.

Additionally, my research on sustainable ranching methods is based here in the U.S. but is equally relevant for developing countries. Sustainable ranching must reduce inputs (and therefore emissions) but maintain output. The lack of access to inputs, whether due to distance or cost, is often seen as a limitation to “modernization” of agriculture in developing countries. But if we can show developing countries that they can maintain production without as many inputs, we will strengthen their food security.