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Protracted crises are among the most challenging contexts in which to fight food insecurity and malnutrition. Driven by multiple underlying causes such as recurrent natural or human made disasters, weak governance and unsustainable livelihood systems, protracted crises affect an estimated 366 million people worldwide.

In the past scaling-up in agriculture was all about the ways extension could help informing farmers more effectively and about application of the good agricultural practice research.

The development of knowledge based bio-economies is increasingly seen as a pathway towards a sustainable economic growth based on renewable resources, moving away from the fossil fuel economy and responding to pressing local and global challenges, including climate change.

The world is becoming a more urbanized place, currently about 50% of the worlds´ population lives in cities and the proportion is expected to increase to almost 70% in 2050. The increase is likely to be particularly prominent in Africa and Asia, where urban population is expected to double between 2000 and 2030.

There is a growing need for a deepened knowledge among different stakeholders in Sweden and globally about the need for a transition of the agriculture sector to an approach based on biodiversity and ecosystem services (as for example biological control, water regulation, nutrient circulation processes) and on local knowledge, creativity and initiative combined with cross-learning over networks

The food security discourse has weak focus on the agro-pastoral systems typical for sub-Saharan drylands. These regions have 40% planetary land cover and host 1/3 of its population - often among the poorest. Much of these lands are degraded for food security and livelihood potentials. Trees are important structural components in these systems and related to attempts of restoration.

A growing population as well as the growing role of biofuels has set the trend for increased demand on agricultural production systems. Meeting future food and energy demand on limited land area requires intensification in production and, hence, increased investment in the agricultural sector.

In February 2014 experts from SLU Global held the first in the series of workshops supported by SIANI and organized around the theme ‘Sustainable Agricultural Production and Food Security'.

Rodents can not only make people jump in fright, but can also pose serious problems to food security. Although only 20 out 1700 rodent species are qualified as pests, each year they cause harvest losses of approximately 17%, enough to feed more than 25 million Indonesians for a year.