CIES, together with the Luc Hoffmann Institute (WWF) and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (LSE), convened a two-day symposium on Global Land Use Patterns and Food Security at King's College Cambridge on 20-21 September 2014 as part of its Sustainable Human Niche project, with financial support from the MAVA Foundation.

A broad range of researchers, including ecologists, agronomists, entomologists, and economists, discussed global population, land use trends and future food security. A central question considered by the group was the extent to which global aggregate land use has the potential to generate problems of increased hazards or increasing variability in agricultural production.