Last year’s Food Farmer Fork series organised by Boerengroep and Otherwise was a big success. Some 750 people came to one or more of the 9 evening lectures and activities. The series could also be followed as a Capita Selecta course with the Rural Sociology group. Initially, 40 students enrolled and 20 students finalised the course successfully with the writing of an essay.  All in all, it inspired both participants and us as organisers. So, the new series until the summer is again available for students to follow as a capita selecta course. Please look at the websites of Boerengroep and Otherwise where you can subscribe to the course and download the course outline. The current topic; grassroots science. Why?

“Socially driven” initiatives (see Jan Douwe van der Ploeg in Development and Change 43), by for example farmers, consumers, civil society organisations, sometimes in collaboration with scientists, constantly emerge in the face of ¬poverty, social injustice, hunger, natural resource degradation, environmental decline and other global problems. Some of these initiatives contain practices that promise more sustainable livelihoods for the people on the ground while simultaneously tackling global problems. Many initiatives stand in stark contrast and sometimes even contradict with the “technologically driven” solutions implemented by many scientists and policy makers.

Throughout the Course, representatives from a selection of these types of initiatives will present their achievements, their views on how these can contribute to positive social change. You will be attending lectures, read articles that correspond with the topics of the lectures, and finish the course with a writen personal reflection on the whole series.

Tonight is the first lecture on Agroecology by Irene Cardoso, Vice president of the Brazilian Agroecology Association (ABA), Soil Scientist at The Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), and Coordinator of the Center for Alternative Technology of Zona da Mata (CTA-ZM). 19.30 Forum builing C221