By Kelly Reed, IFSTAL Education Coordinator, Warwick University.
The current and future challenges we face in feeding the world in a sustainable and equitable way are well known. They demand a concerted and coordinated response across scales and sectors of society. The first session in the Conference presented different voices from the ‘front-line’ of food insecurity, for example:
- Dame Barbara Stocking (Murray Edwards College, Cambridge and former chief executive of OXFAM), discussed how we need to support small farmers to reduce mass migration to large towns, as well as highlighting the problems of land grabbing that is occurring in places such as Uganda – where countries such as Saudi Arabia are grabbing land in Africa to grow their crops – which is also displacing farming communities.
- Shadrach Yoash and John Opio Eluru (Farm Africa) discussed the problems faced by the small holders in Tanzania and Uganda, and suggest that farmers need policies to increase and sustain agriculture, policies to avoid waste through increased food reserves in stores and farms, improved infrastructure, support to access markets and facilitate investment, environmental protection and to revise restrictions on smallholder exports.
The session was concluded with a panel discussion, which included IFSTAL’s very own John Ingram, who explored priority research questions and opportunities for impact for the global food system.
Day two of the conference saw two parallel streams of discussion, 1. Food security, sustainability and conservation, and 2. Economics, culture and politics of food. How we feed the world, manage finite natural resources sustainably, as well as contributing to economic growth were all discussed. There are too many to list here but talks included:
- Dietary choices and planetary impacts (Dr Tara Garnett, Food Climate Research Network, University of Oxford)
- TEEB for Agriculture and Food: Valuing impacts and dependencies in the eco-agri-food systems complex (Dr Salman Hussain, United Nations Environment Programme)
- Feeding a growing population: food sustainability and international economic law (Prof Fiona Smith, Warwick University)
- Sustainable food, culture and integration in Solidarity Purchase Groups Movement: the case of Barikamà in Rome (Daniela Bernaschi, University of Florence)
- Reducing food waste to reduce our environmental impact (Niki Charalampopoulou, Feedback)
- Making smallholder resilient agriculture work for women farmers – the case of system of rice intensification (SRI) in India (Regina Handsa, University of Cambridge
- Sustainable food, culture and integration in Solidarity Purchase Groups Movement: the case of Barikamà in Rome (Daniela Bernaschi, University of Florence)
- Reducing food waste to reduce our environmental impact (Niki Charalampopoulou, Feedback)
- Making smallholder resilient agriculture work for women farmers – the case of system of rice intensification (SRI) in India (Regina Handsa, University of Cambridge)
IFSTAL was also represented by a poster, explaining the programme and the feedback we have received to make year 2 even better!
At the end of the second day we came away thinking about what more can be done to make change happen in the food system. For example, improved access to markets, technology, better infrastructure, reliable weather forecasts, education, training and government legislation all have a role to play in supporting the sustainable development of agriculture, especially in poorer nations.
To find out more about the Cambridge Global Food Security initiative visit their website: http://www.globalfood.cam.ac.uk/
