Swette Center (pronounced “swee-tee”) faculty recognize that one-dimensional metrics, like yield per hectare, are important but blind us to many opportunities if not considered within a broader food systems approach. Increasingly, food system analysis is recognized for its power to provide greater understanding of complex interactions and real world dynamics than other kinds of lens, frameworks, or models. Food system analysis can help policymakers and others understand potential trade-offs of proposed interventions, technologies, and policies by taking into account the many aspects of food and agriculture typically studied — agricultural land, inputs, fisheries, infrastructure, labor, and the like — and placing these component parts within an integrated social and environmental context.

At the Swette Center, faculty are reinventing research processes, and by doing so, the Center is producing policy-relevant knowledge to make the consequences of our food choices explicit in quantitative and qualitative terms.

• Cultivating the future: Empowering the next generations through leading edge research, education and policy.



• Facilitating and accelerating innovation through cross-pollination: ASU sustainability scientists and scholars connect and collaborate with global food producers, distributors and consumers to solve pressing food systems challenges through holistic systems thinking and design.

• Commitment to our community: We’re more than scholars and policymakers — we’re friends, change agents and embedded partners working with all who shape food systems.


• Accessible Expertise: We are perpetual students that cultivate an inviting environment of curiosity, critical thinking, and networking.