Global Food Systems & U.S. National Security

Speaker:  Dr. Molly Jahn, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison Dept. of Agronomy, Center for Sustainability, Global Health Institute

Professor Jahn will share her thoughts as an active participant in world agricultural development debates as well as an advisor on food security risks to the insurance industry and U.S. agencies.  Emerging trends and vulnerabilities in the global food system present wide-ranging, strategic challenges to U.S. security interests.  In recent years, food price shocks in Syria, the Middle East and Africa have contributed to disastrous impacts including armed conflict, violent extremism, regime change, migration pressures, and famine.  Dr. Jahn will share updates on some recent work she and her research team have done on emerging risks and vulnerabilities in global food systems and will discuss implications for U.S. national and global security. 

Molly Jahn is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with appointments in the Department of Agronomy, the Center for Sustainability, and the Global Health Institute.  Through her Jahn Research Group, she also consults globally on agriculture and risks in the world food system with business, government, foundations, and international institutions.  From 2006-2011, she was Dean of the UW College of Agriculture.  In 2009-10, she served as acting Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  In her distinguished career in plant genetics and breeding, she has authored over 100 publications, and trained dozens of graduate and postdoc students at UW Madison and Cornell University.  Crop varieties from her research programs are grown commercially on six continents under over 60 commercial licenses.  Jahn is a graduate of Swarthmore College and holds graduate degrees from MIT and Cornell.