She is currently University Professor, University of Amsterdam, Kingdom of the Netherlands where she concentrates on issues of sustainability and scientific policy. She is a recognized global leader in issues of food and agriculture and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry and the Real Academia de Ingeniería. She worked at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization from 1997 through to 2006 – first as Director of Research, Extension and Training, and later as Assistant Director-General covering agriculture, biodiversity, water, climate change, soils, plant animal production, veterinary health and food and nutrition.

She oversaw major reforms toward more flexibility in responding to worldwide agricultural crises and increased collaboration with the private sector and nongovernmental organizations. She has extensive understanding of international environmental negotiations and UN processes and has participated in many of the major environmental treaty meetings. Fresco obtained a Ph.D. in tropical agronomy (cum laude) from Wageningen University, where she held the chair of professor of plant production systems and led the Department of Agronomy where she pioneered many interdisciplinary research programs, including land use and soil nutrient modeling.

She has published over 100 scientific papers and three books (while reports written while at the UN were not published by name), and hundreds of articles on popular science in Dutch. She served extensively on boards and evaluation committees for several Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers. She was the founding chair of LUCC, a joint IGBP and IHDP program and land use and cover change. She is a member of the Socio-Economic Council of The Netherlands, the highest advisory body of the country. Beyond her scientific work serves as a non-executive director of Unilever International and as a board member of Rabobank, one of the largest cooperative banks in the world.

She is deeply committed to shaping policy on sustainable agriculture and food consumption, the effects of climate change on vegetation and land use, and forging partnerships between the scientific, government and the non-governmental and private sector communities.