Reimagining Food and Farming for social and environmental justice

Food and Farming in a Pandemic Age: The new battle ground for survival -in world habitat week

Preventing the growing food poverty everywhere in the world.

Thousands of years ago humans across the world began moving away from being hunter-gatherer to cultivating and domesticating crops for food, fibre and other needs. Access to such resources allowed the human population to increase, and helped in the development of trade and industries; further boosted by the industrial revolution, agriculture has formed the bedrock of modern human society and allowed complex societies to develop.

Today, while on the face of it modern industrial agriculture has decreased economic costs and allowed for massive scaling up of food production, we are now reckoning with the darker consequences of the system. With climate change rapidly affecting the conditions conducive to agricultural and biodiversity loss triggered by human activities, the agricultural system is being destabilized and will be facing massive pressure in the coming years. In a feedback loop, industrialized agriculture is also one of the largest contributors of CO2 emissions industry wise.

Oceans, the other big source of food and on which approximately 3 billion people rely on for subsistence, are facing increasing pressure from being overfished, polluted and temperature rise. We have already seen the inefficiencies of the system exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic - supply chains being disrupted and massive amounts of food going to waste because they couldn't be sold. The humans involved in these systems of food productions, already exploited and at the bottom rung, are themselves having their livelihoods affected.

How will we able to feed humans all across the globe with our current systems on the verge of breaking down, and each new crisis exposing more fault lines in how we are doing things today? What will a farmer need to look like in the coming decades? What practices do we need to overhaul and replace with? What kind of inequalities do we need to address?

This virtual event aims to foster a platform for community focused dialogue - with experts as well as people all across the world - on how we can find holistic solutions to the issues facing, what we can learn from each other and how we can take individual and systemic action for a better future.

Changing the model of Agriculture- and CAP -Where are the difficulties - the unique role of agriculture in political life- food and agriculture- ?

Indicative Schedule:

14.00 Welcome and Introduction

14.00-14.30 Opening Plenary - Recalibrating our role in nature and our relationship with biodiversity

14.30-15.20 Food and Farming: Industrialisation of Agriculture and the Role of Technology v the role and benefits of nature

15.20- 16.30 Reimagining Food and Farming for the 21st Century

Recalibrating our future and natures bounty

16.30-17.30 food poverty and the perspectives around the world

17.30- 18.00 our recomendations and next steps

Prospective speakers being confirmed

Ewa Suffin - Poland