Sarah K. Jones

Sarah’s research focuses on understanding the role of agrobiodiversity in creating farms and landscapes that provide for both people and nature. She is particularly interested in exploring synergies and trade-offs between food production and biodiversity conservation goals and strategies for achieving these goals in tandem. Sarah is a geographer and mathematician by training. Her work is grounded in systems thinking – recognizing that interactions across space and time influence outcomes in farms and landscapes - and the value of systematically unpacking this complexity to identify patterns and leverage points. She uses a range of approaches, including dialogue, surveys, spatial data analysis, systematic literature reviews, and modelling, as part of interdisciplinary collaborative projects.

Sarah leads the Agrobiodiversity Index project focused on developing and applying indicators for monitoring biodiversity in food systems (2017-present), with indepth work in India and Peru. She is Area of Work 5 lead of the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes science program, on Performance Assessment and Evidence Generation (2026-2030), focused on generating evidence of how to achieve prosperous, resilient and sustainable multifunctional landscapes in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Peru, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Alongside this, Sarah leads the Alliance contributions to the IKI-funded BioFinCas project on scaling biodiversity-friendly and climate-resilient agricultural practices in Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Mexico (2023-2031) and EC-funded MoSAFS project on Modelling pathways for a sustainable and agroecological transition of food systems in Kenya, Mozambique and Senegal (2025-2026).

Sarah is a member of the FABLE consortium Secretariat, Senior Advisor to the Regenerative Food System Alliance, and Lead Author on the IPBES Spatial Planning and Connectivity Assessment.

Sarah currently co-supervises one PhD student: Paul Fauchon researching the effects of increasing functional diversity in croplands on Nature’s Contributions to People with a focus on agroforestry systems. She welcomes expressions of interest from Master and PhD candidates interested in conducting research related to the Agrobiodiversity Index project, in partnership with a university. Please send an email with your CV and a brief description of your idea.