Our research

Discover research projects taking place at the Institute for Sustainable Food. Our interdisciplinary approach addresses the entire food system by incorporating the work of natural and social scientists.

Research Projects

COVID-19 research

Experts from the Institute for Sustainable Food are working to understand the fragility in our supply chains and collaborate on ways to improve food security for all.

An illustration showing attributes of a sustainable food ecosystem

Local food, Covid-19 and the future of the UK's food systems

The local food sector came into focus during the Covid-19 pandemic as the UK’s mainstream food systems experienced shocks and shifts. This project examines this period and shows how we can enhance the resilience of the local food sector and of the wider food system.

Enhancing local food system resilience

Empty egg shelves in a grocery store or supermarket

Food vulnerability during COVID-19

This UKRI ESRC funded research project, led by Dr Hannah Lambie-Mumford, maps and monitors responses addressing concerns about insufficient food access during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Informing food access policy and practice

Global research

Outdoor image at day time of Asian woman feeding food to her grandson. The little child is opening his mouth wide to eat his lunch fed by his grandmother. Two people, Head and shoulder, horizontal composition and selective focus.

Action Against Stunting Hub

Professor Bhavani Shankar leads the food systems work package of this £19M collaboration. This work focuses on investigating the food environments faced by households in the study sites to improve diets and help alleviate stunting.

UKRI GCRF funded project

Young girl holding basil plants

Feeding the world with foam

The Desert Garden project is a unique project born out of innovative science and is giving families displaced by war the opportunity to grow fresh food in the desert using discarded mattresses.

Desert Garden project

Close-Up Of Woman Preparing Food - stock photo taken in Delhi, India

Forgotten Food

A team of scientists is growing a type of rice from India that had become extinct with the spread of higher-yielding types, as part of a project to revive recipes and flavours that have been lost.

AHCR GCRF Funded project

The natural environment

Professor Duncan Cameron inspecting tomatoes in a large greenhouse

Harnessing and integrating disease suppressive microbes and synthetic soils for sustainable, low input horticulture

This £1.5 million grant from the BBSRC will help our experts led by Professor Duncan Cameron, Institute director, to understand how beneficial bacteria protect plants’ health – in a similar way to gut bacteria in humans.

BBSRC funded project

Concept for agritech showing graphic display with smart farm icons over a background of crops in a field.

Signals in the soil: Real-time and Continuous Monitoring of Phosphates in the Soil

This new £1.8m research project led by the University of Sheffield is supporting the development of sensors to detect phosphate in soil, to help farmers increase their crop yield and reduce fertiliser use.

NERC funded project

Two hands holding rice.

Mapping arsenic in rice

A team of UK scientists led by Dr Manoj Menon are investigating rice plants in a bid to find out whether people are inadvertently consuming dangerous levels of arsenic – a deadly poison and carcinogen – through rice, meat and dairy products.

STFC Food Network+ funded project

Local research

Sheffield urban growing map

The hidden potential of urban horticulture

Research led by Dr Jill Edmondson found that growing fruit and vegetables in just 10 per cent of a city’s gardens and other urban green spaces could provide 15 per cent of the local population with their ‘five a day’.

UKRI EPSRC and ISCF funded project

close up plants in hydroponics system

Hydroponic growing in an abandoned school

In Sheffield, the team has set up an urban foam farm in an abandoned primary school and is working to increase access to fresh produce in a food desert, and train the community to grow food locally using this soil-free system.

Tinsley hydroponics

Sustainable food resilient city

Sheffield: Resilient city

Teams from the Institute for Sustainable Food are working on low impact agriculture in urban spaces, building mini-farms in old shipping containers — with the first prototype opening in 2020. This approach, funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund Impact Accelerator Account, British Council and the Global Challenges Research Fund, addresses the entire agrifood system

Urban mini-farms

Informing policy

cows grazing in a field stock image

Agri-Environmental Governance Post-Brexit

The UK’s decision to leave the EU is seen by the government as an opportunity to reform UK agricultural land policy. Researchers from Sheffield and Reading will work with farmers, stakeholders and Defra to develop a model for co-designing the new post-Brexit Environmental Land Management system.

Reforming UK agricultural land policy

Professor Peter Jackson gives a speech.

Business as usual ‘no longer an option’ for Europe’s food system

The Evidence Review Report, A sustainable food system for the European Union, provides an evidence base for the scientific opinion of the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Advisors. The working group was led by Professor Peter Jackson, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield.

The SAPEA report

African microgreen researcher studying stacks of hydroponic plant crops in a vertical farming facility.

STFC Food Network+

The University of Sheffield led network brings together more than 750 international and multidisciplinary researchers from across the agri-food sector to work with experts from STFC’s research facilities, all with the aim of solving some of the world’s greatest food sustainability challenges.

The STFC Food Network +