Prof Tim Benton is the Champion for the UK's Global Food Security (GFS) programme. GFS is a partnership of the UK's main public funders of research in food security, including both the research councils and government departments. The role of GFS is to ensure that strategically important research in this area is undertaken, and to add value to research via interdisciplinary collaboration, alignment and engagement of different communities of stakeholders.

Prof Benton is also a leading researcher, based at the University of Leeds.