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Joshua Arnold, Stockbridge School of Agriculture’s assistant extension professor of urban agriculture, was recently selected by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s (CIFAR) to join their Arrell Future of Food Initiative, part of its multi-year effort to address mounting pressures on the global food system, including rising food insecurity, declining biodiversity and intensifying climate shocks.

Arnold, who will join the initiative’s Urban Future of Food research team, is one of an international host of researchers from 13 countries and 21 disciplines.

“The team will meet with other invited scholars, several times in the coming years, and could lead to long-term research and knowledge generation,” Arnold says.

Arnold’s home field is agroecology—a science applying ecological principles alongside holistic, sustainable approaches to agriculture, so that farming works with nature rather than against it. Agroecologists pursue such goals as enhancing biodiversity, restoring soil health and strengthening food system resilience.

At Stockbridge, Arnold combines research, extension and teaching to better the health of cities and to increase food security. He specializes in integrated pest management, soils and the social-ecological factors that influence and create urban agroecosystems.

In their proposal, Arnold and his team explain that that a fear of ecological limits, such as “peak soil,” as well as population growth has been used to justify the industrialization of agriculture. “Industrializing agriculture pushed more people from rural to urban areas,” they write.

To address the “looming polyfood crisis and ongoing urbanization,” the team’s research asks: “is there a value to descaling and recentering agriculture in cities?”

“The sheer complexity of the global food crisis demands collaboration across traditional boundaries,” says CIFAR President Stephen J. Toope. “I congratulate these exceptional researchers on reaching this critical milestone.

Since 1981, CIFAR has been building an integrated approach that acknowledges the complexity of these problems, and brings together diverse voices to reimagine the future, including how food is grown, shared and sustained in a rapidly changing world. Today, CIFAR connects more than 1000 of the world’s best scholars and scientists, from across 30 countries, funding and developing future research leaders to address high-risk, important, and complex questions—many around the sustainability and reliability of global food sources.