IGERT: Food Systems and Poverty Reduction

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5). This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award supports the development of a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research in food systems as they relate to poverty reduction. Most people suffering chronic extreme poverty live in rural areas in developing countries and rely heavily on food systems - the human-managed biophysical systems that regulate the production, distribution and consumption of food - as producers, consumers and/or workers. Food systems improvements have stimulated long-term improvements in human well-being yet these improvements elude people currently suffering extreme poverty. This program provides graduate students with the conceptual and methodological tools necessary for understanding the structure and dynamics of complex systems that perpetuate extreme rural poverty. This rich understanding of the larger context into which their own disciplinary studies fit enhances students' ability to assess the implications, potential and impact of discipline-specific scientific discoveries. A distinguishing feature of this program is that students work in interdisciplinary research teams at shared research sites in East Africa, organized around intellectually challenging, ecologically complex and socioeconomically important problems that drive extreme poverty and require broadly informed science and policies to address. The resulting training will build a diverse cadre of skilled natural and social scientists able to integrate information from diverse sub-systems to conduct scientifically sound, systems-based research to help spur the development of food system interventions and strategies that can reduce extreme poverty worldwide. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.