Lesli Hoey, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning, is co-author of a new article published in World Development, a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary development studies journal. The article, “Development pathways toward ‘zero hunger,’” examines the United Nations goal of eradicating malnourishment and food insecurity from a food-systems standpoint.

The authors pose a difficult question: “What if agriculture and food systems were guided by a goal of human and environmental health?,” and they give a thorough review of possible answers by citing studies from multiple fields of research. This interdisciplinary approach, which includes a focus on the importance of incorporating policy science with nutrition and ecology, is key to the authors’ proposal for addressing world hunger. “We argue that the pathway to achieving Zero Hunger should center on place-based, adaptive, participatory solutions that simultaneously attend to local institutional capacities, agroecosystem diversification and ecological management, and the quality of local diets,” they wrote.

Hoey’s co-authors are Jennifer Blesh, Andrew D. Jones, Harriet Friedmann, and Ivette Perfecto. Read the article at sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305750X19300294.