Profile:

Dr Danny Hunter is a Principal Scientist with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, one of the CGIAR international agricultural research centers. He has more than 25 years’ experience in over 30 countries - including 15 years living and working in Asia and the Pacific - leading and managing multidisciplinary teams working on environment and food, diets, and nutrition. He was team leader of multiple global projects funded by the European Union, ACIAR, AusAID, NZAID, Global Environment Facility and others.

As a researcher and practitioner, Dr Hunter’s work is focused on promoting planet-friendly school meals. He is passionate about improving the provision of local, nutritious foods in school meals and strengthening school food environments to deliver healthier diets. He is particularly interested in integrated school nutrition approaches based on biodiversity-rich school gardens, linking local agroecological food production to school meals and school-based food systems and climate education. In 2011, he was awarded the Alumni Award for Outstanding International Achievement by the University of Sydney, Faculty of Agriculture.

Danny was the Global Project Coordinator of the Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition (BFN) project, recently named one of the CGIAR’s top innovations of the last 50 years. Before joining the CGIAR in 2007 he worked for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Fiji, the University of the South Pacific (USP), Samoa and Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture, Maldives. He is a lead author of the School Meals Coalition Research Consortium’s White Paper, School Meals and Food Systems: Rethinking the Consequences for Climate, Environment, Biodiversity, and Food Sovereignty (2023).  Adjunct Professor Danny Hunter is an adjunct with the Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research.

Research areas:

• School meals
• Food systems
• Public food procurement
• Regenerative agriculture
• Climate change and biodiversity
• Rural development