The take-home messages on forests and food security and nutrition are essentially that:
- Diverse forest and tree-based production systems offer advantages over monocropping systems because of their adaptability and resilience.
- Forest and tree-based production systems most often contribute the diverse nutrient-rich foods that are often in short supply in the diets of the poor.
- There are a multitude of ecosystem services provided by forests and trees that simultaneously support food production, nutrition, sustainability as well as environmental and human health.
- Managing landscapes on a multifunctional basis in a way that integrates food production, biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem services can contribute significantly to global food and nutritional security
- Forests and trees alone will not achieve global food security, but can play a major role: discourse has started to change. Policy reform and implementation to reflect this shifting paradigm now needs to take place.