Category Archives: Knowledge and Food Systems

Knowledge and Food Systems, Scientific community

2013 Yale Food Systems Symposium: Urbanization and Food Systems Transformation

Request for Proposals
2013 Yale Food Systems Symposium: Urbanization and Food Systems Transformation
Yale University, October 18-19, 2013

The parallel forces of urbanization and globalization are transforming our planet. They are bringing unprecedented changes to food production and distribution, livelihoods, communities, and the environment. While the pace of this transformation presents significant challenges to the creation of just and sustainable food systems, it may also create powerful opportunities: to support ecological stewardship, promote economic sustainability, cultivate human health, and ensure social justice. Currently, divergent food system paradigms compete for validity. How can these diverse perspectives be negotiated? How can we synchronize the efforts of research, policy, and practice?

The Yale Food Systems Symposium will bring emerging and established scholars and practitioners to work together in action-oriented sessions that address the complex ecological and socio-economic processes of food production, consumption, climate change and rapid urbanization. A variety of session formats will encourage transdisciplinary dialogue and an active exchange of ideas. We seek a diversity of proposal formats: panels, working groups, roundtables, poster presentations, and papers. We welcome perspectives from the natural and social sciences, from applied disciplines, and from community practitioners. Proposals that bring scholars and practitioners together, work across disciplines, or partner emerging and established researchers are especially encouraged.
Topic areas include, but are not limited to:

  • Climate change and the food system
  • Urbanization, land use change, and food systems planning
  • Politics, policies, and governance across scales
  • Agricultural biodiversity and issues of genetic property
  • Sustainable intensification, multi-functional agriculture
  • Urban-rural linkages
  • Public and market-based approaches to regulating the food system
  • Alternative food networks
  • The right to food, food justice, and food sovereignty movements
  • Industrial ecology approaches to food systems analysis
  • Sustainable diets and assessing and forecasting nutrition trends
  • Sustainable supply chains
  • University-community partnerships
  • Research methods, participatory practice, and frameworks for collaboration

Submission form and deadlines:

Deadline for submission is July 1, 2025. Abstracts & workshop proposals should be 150-200 words and include a title and keywords. Please submit online using our abstract submission form. Accepted proposals will be notified by August 15, 2013.

For more information, please see:
www.yalefoodsymposium.org

Questions about proposal submission and registration may be directed to [email protected].

Food Insecurity, Knowledge and Food Systems, Scientific community

New Research Program: Urban Food Plus

The Universities of Kassel, Göttingen, Freiburg and Ruhruni Bochum have announced an exciting new research program called “Urban Food Plus”, which explores the opportunities of (peri-)urban farming to address food insecurity:

African food security not only depends on productivity increases in marginal rural areas, but increasingly also on a more efficient use of niche environments such as (peri-)urban zones, where innovations are more easily adopted due to close market linkages between producers and consumers.

Across different climatic zones urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) covers 5% to 36% of an African city’s total food supply and up to 90% of its fresh vegetable consumption. However, little is known about how to overcome problems in resource use efficiencies, negative externalities, and UPA-related income effects on gender or different population groups.

The multi-disciplinary UrbanFoodPlus network of German, African, and international scientists, private sector representatives, and stakeholders aims at developing site-specific, farmer-tailored innovations for improved agricultural production, food safety, and value chains in four major West African cities (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Tamale, Ghana; Bamako, Mali and Bamenda, Cameroon).

On-farm experiments, workshops, and policy dialogues involving stakeholders at different levels aim at detecting bottlenecks in UPA production and marketing chains, and identifying and test-implementing options to overcome them. An International Graduate School combining research and teaching capacity at African and German universities will enhance scientific capacity building and knowledge transfer.

There are several openings for ph.D. and postdoc positions available at the project website.

Knowledge and Food Systems, Scientific community

GMO Corn could cause Cancer

According to a new study released September 19th, 2012 and published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology by a research team from the University of Caen under leadership of Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, Monsanto’s GM-Corn NK603 was found to cause cancer in lab rats. In a two-year study in which rats were fed genetically manipulated maize, the animals developed tumors as well as damages to liver and kidney.
The study, conducted with a trial group of 200 rats, is the first long-term assessment of health risks from GM corn. It was financed by the Ceres foundation and conducted under strict secrecy. GM corn is a multi-billion dollar business, especially in the US, and seed monopolist Monsanto is the central player. NK603 is a crop that is Roundup-tolerant; Roundup is Monsanto’s brand name for the universal herbicide glyphosate.
France is now thinking of banning NK 603, which cannot be grown under European law but is permitted as animal feed. This would mark a major drawback for Monsanto in Europe.
Sources: Greenpeace Magazin; arte journal website; science.orf.at