The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems is committed to research and innovation that creates solutions to these local and global challenges. The centre is a globally significant prototyping site for exportable solutions relevant to industry, farmers and communities worldwide.

The CSFS offers a vital microcosm for the study of regionally and globally significant food sustainability issues. Its living laboratory nature, with its food production (UBC Farm) and community-based programs, allows for the manipulation of a wholly contained food system, from production to processing to consumption along the individual to community health spectrum. This unique seed to plate research platform allows for knowledge and interventions to be assessed and designed in an integrated fashion, making essential connections between food system components, but also across all relevant communities.

Holding to the motto, “no one thing does just one thing,” CSFS aims to research integration across all of society’s components and functions. In the course of discovering new or different forms of knowledge or technology, and communicating their relevance, CSFS address 1) how to fundamentally transform society’s relationship with the land, 2) what new technologies should be developed, prototyped, and tested to achieve sustainable food systems, and 3) how we innovate the value chain, from seed to plate, to achieve greater health and value of our food?