Author Archives: Els Hegger

Developing a food strategy: insights from Ede

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by Lara Sibbing

20140103_184529Today, food is no longer just a rural issue. With more than half of the world population living in cities, food is a relatively new topic for cities and especially for municipalities to deal with. This is also the case for the municipality of Ede, which is close to Wageningen. This municipality expressed its ambitions for 2025 in a vision document entitled ‘Ede chooses food’. Frankly, the ambition of the municipality of Ede was to ‘go for food’. But what does that actually mean?

The municipality of Ede is one of the largest in size in the Netherlands – funnily enough though, Ede is officially not even a city, as it never got city rights, as opposed to Wageningen – and besides the actual city (or, village) of Ede, the municipality also encompasses a large rural area with several small villages. It is therefore an interesting place: it includes a city with a rural background that is still vivid, and is colored by a splash of knowledge of agricultural research coming in from Wageningen’s agricultural university; and all of that in one municipality. Continue reading →

Ex-change offers challenging internships & theses

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ex-changeLooking for a challenging and adventurous internship or thesis for your Master studies in Africa? Take a look at the website of the organisation Ex-change and if inspired, contact Henk Haring (info@ex-change.nl) for more information. Currently, there are various concrete vacancies for students, available at the Rural Sociology Group. Contact our education coordinator Els Hegger (els.hegger@wur.nl) for more info.

Internship possibility

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STA73745Earlier this year Clara Celestino Siurana completed her internship at the PeeRGroup in Donderen. She developed a design and building of a vegetable garden (see here for original description of the intership). Their terrain, a former ammunition depot has now the status of an ‘estate’ and ecologically rare species have been discovered because nature on that terrain has not been fertilized by convential agriculture for the past 50 years. They have a long way to go in making the terrain a multifunctional space open for public and connected to the care farm with which they collaborate. The small kitchen garden by Clara is only one of the things they want to develop.

Therefore, the PeeRGroup Donderen is still looking for students that want to play a role in further developing this unique project. Contact Marin de Boer (marin@peergroup.nl) or Sjoerd Wagenaar (sjoerd@peergroup.nl) if you are interested. Look at their website (http://www.peergroup.nl/donderboerkamp/) for more information.

International Workshop in Urban Food Strategies

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Next Week in Porto Alegre, Practioners, researchers and public agents interested in sustainable food prosumption will explore the Opportunities and challenges for feeding the cities and the countryside in the Brazilian contexts.

As one of the results of the PUREFOOD intercontinental cooperation the Rural Development Program of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, the Brazilian PUREFOOD Partner or the Rural Development Department of  Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul organizes the first Workshop in Urban Food Strategies. Professor  Sergio Schneider and the food group (http://www.ufrgs.br/weaa/comissao-organizadora/) have set  a very interesting agenda for the coming third and four of December. Harriet Friedman, Carolyn Steele, Maria Fonte, Cecilia Diaz and Willem Treep will join a select group of Brazilian researchers and practitioners as Ivana Lovo, Marcos Borba, Livia Barbosa, Patrícia Chaves, Francisco Milanez and Altivo Cunha in a workshop designed to join academia, public agents and food practitioners.

Live streaming and translation from Portuguess to English will be offered. So every one can join and enjoy the seminar. The online streaming will begin on Tuesday 3rd of December at 09:00 am Brazilian Time and will finish on Wednesday 4th of December in the afternoon. The following link will give access to the internet connection: http://multimidia.ufrgs.br/ramgen/broadcast/plageder/aovivo.rm

Full access to the program and information is available at http://www.ufrgs.br/weaa/.

PUREFOOD final conference: Save the Date!

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PUREFOOD logoOn 14 and 15 May 2014 the city of Utrecht (the Netherlands) will host us for the final PUREFOOD conference. The conference is organised in cooperation with the ‘Day of Dutch Urban Agriculture’ (Dag van de Stadslandbouw), which will be held on Thursday 15th of May in The Fabrique in Utrecht and attracts yearly around 500 people. The PUREFOOD project will contribute to organising 9 international sessions on Thursday. The PUREFOOD conference will start with a meet & greet on Tuesday evening at a special location in Utrecht. On Wednesday morning there is an interesting programme, in English only, where we will listen, discuss, brainstorm, present and network with a selected group of people (therefore: limited places available!). In the afternoon we will explore Utrecht and its surroundings to see, hear, feel and taste some of the fabulous products developed in the region.

The full programme of the conference, including speakers and other interesting people, will be available soon. Keep an eye on the weblog of the PUREFOOD project: www.purefoodlinks.eu.