Toward a Sustainable Future Food System: The Need for Integrated Data across Multiple and Diverse Disciplines.

The next thirty years will bring unprecedented challenges to the global food system. Burgeoning population, increasing numbers of middle class individuals that demand more and higher quality food, and environmental challenges, such as water availability, soil health and climate change, are all colliding simultaneously with increased malnutrition (both over- and under-nutrition) and an increasing environmental impact of the agricultural footprint. Solving these challenges will require a new approach – the old linear and reductionist approach must be replaced with systems analysis that model numerous inputs and outputs to help to determine the best overall response. Such an approach requires that data from disciplines as diverse as agronomy, environmental science and human nutrition be linked and available for modelling efforts. Databases in ARS such as the National Nutrient Database and NUOnet have begun to develop such approaches but many challenges remain. Primary challenges include development of an ontology that allow diverse data to “speak” to each other, issues of access and quality control and development of common metadata tags. Successful development of such systems will greatly enhance the ability of ARS to meet the challenges and assure sustainable health of the environment, people and animals.