The twin challenges of providing food security for people and conserving and restoring biodiversity are amongst the most pressing of our era, intensified by climate change. There is wide recognition that current food systems dominated by industrial agriculture are unsustainable and inequitable, yet these are often locked-in by powerful political-economic interests, including those of highly concentrated corporate agri-food and fossil fuel industries.

At the same time, many alternatives are emerging, often based on regenerative and agro-ecological principles and processes, and driven by the actions of farmers, communities and social movements worldwide. Sustainable land use is now a central policy goal, recognised in the Global Biodiversity Framework, yet with many unresolved questions about what this means in different contexts.

Many conservation organisations and researchers across the CCI partnership, together with their wider networks, have been working on questions of food, agriculture and biodiversity for some time, yet from very different angles. On November 21, fifty of them came together in a lively Collaborative Workshop convened by myself as Executive Director at CCI and Lynn Dicks, who heads the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Global Food Security, to share ongoing work and ideas, and discuss emerging agendas for future collaborative work. We heard a rich array of short presentations. Some shared inspiring on-the-ground examples of regenerative, agroecological and restorative practices, whether the Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) of Andhra Pradesh, India; integrated pest management in the forest zone of Liberia, the rewilding of landscapes in Europe, or the green transitions emergent amongst East Anglian farming communities. Others shared modelling frameworks and metrics such as LIFE that are exploring synergies and trade-offs between land use for food production and biodiversity at global and regional scales.

Researchers are discovering innovative ways to repurpose acai residue, which makes up 85% of the berry and is usually wasted, after the pulp is extracted.

We also heard from those addressing trade and supply chains, whether TRAFFIC’s work on wild foods, UNEP-WCMC and partners’ explorations of food trade in the TRADE Hub, or the pioneering work on socio-bioeconomies in the Amazon of Rachael Garrett and her team in the Conservation Research Institute. Many messages of hope emerged: future land use and diets that combine feeding people, and protecting and restoring nature, are not only possible, but there in-the-making.

Nevertheless, contentious issues emerged. What are the synergies and trade-offs between different land uses in different contexts? How can we move beyond simple binaries such as food yield vs. species conservation, land sparing vs. land sharing?  What sorts of biodiversity outcomes are compatible with what sorts of land use for food, cultivated and wild, and how can these be valued and measured? How can we ensure that diverse socio-cultural values and meanings of land and biodiversity are fully recognised, along with the perspectives, rights and heritage of indigenous and local communities? How can we step across scales to integrate evidence and action from plot to landscape, nation to globe? What combinations of regulatory, market and communicative action, in what political-economic contexts, can best drive positive change? There was plenty of healthy debate about these issues, underpinned by different underlying visions and narratives amongst those present.

We also acknowledged those absent, especially the farmers and food producers and traders themselves whose inclusion and agency will be essential in further dialogue and action about these issues. Nevertheless, this workshop was a great kick-off for a collaborative agenda that we hope will grow, showing the power of interdisciplinary research and action to contribute to transformations that affect us all, linking what we eat to the future of all life on our planet.