![conference_audience[1]](https://ruralsociologywageningen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/conference_audience1.jpg?w=300&h=200 "conference_audience[1]")
Last week (8 and 9 October) in Uppsala (Sweden) a conference about animal welfare was held. This event was the final stakeholder meeting of the EU-funded research project entitled ‘Welfare Quality’. Taking part in the project are researchers from many EU countries as well as Australia, Chile, Uruguay and other countries. Since 2004, they have been working on developing a system that will enable measurements of animal welfare levels. The conference focused on how the results of the project could be translated into practical action and how animal welfare can be improved at global level. In this project the Rural Sociology Group was responsible for the subproject on producers’ attitudes and practices with regard to animal welfare. The results were presented by Bettina Bock.
Author Archives: Han Wiskerke
Food and urban planning
Last week the municipality of Amsterdam, together with the Netherlands Institute for Planning & Housing and the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning & the Environment, organized and hosted the International Urban Planning Conference entitled MorgenTomorrow. The two-day conference was a combination of plenary sessions in the morning and parallel workshops in the afternoon. I had the honour and pleasure of convening a workshop entitled ‘Food and the City’. Although the food system is, as Pothukuchi and Kaufman (2000) rightfully state in their article in the Journal of the American Planning Association, a stranger to the field of urban planning it was good to see that the conference organizers had put food very prominently on the conference agenda. Not only by means of the workshop I convened but also by means of keynote lectures in the plenary sessions by LaDonna Redmond and Tim Lang. Both are extremely critical about the prevailing food system.
LaDonna is a community activist as well as founder and CEO the Institute for Community Resource Development (ICRD) in Chicago (Illinois). The ICRD’s mission is to rebuild the local food system by building grocery stores that bring access to sustainable products to urban communities of color, organizing farmers markets, converting vacant lots to urban farm sites and distributing local grown produce to restaurants. I was unable to attend LaDonna Redmond’s keynote, but she participated in my workshop and reflected on the different presentations.
Tim is Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy of City University London. He has authored and co-authored many articles and books about food policy, especially focussing on the relation between food, health, social justice and the environment. His current work is about ‘omni-standards for sustainable diets’. I attended his keynote lecture and what I very much appreciated about his vision is that, despite the food system being a major contributor to climate change, devising sustainable food systems is not simply a matter of creating ‘climate neutral’ food systems. It will only be truely sustainable if it is able to meet a whole range of sustainability standards (a set of omni-standards as he calls them) in which social and health aspects are as important as economic and environmental ones. What struck me most in his presentation, and which will undoubtedly become the new issue in food debates, is the water footprint of the conventional food system.
Around 65% of all fresh water is used for food production and with growing water scarcity and an increase in water-stressed countries, water use is likely to become the main threat for food production. The table below, of which Tim displayed a part in his presentation, is rather shocking. It shows how much water is needed to produce one portion of a whole range of mainly food products and drinks. It surely makes one (at least is does make me) aware of the urgent need for change.
| Portion | Litres | Portion | Litres | Portion | Litres |
| Pint of beer, 568ml | 170 | Cup of coffee, 125ml | 140 | Glass of orange juice, 200ml | 170 |
| Glass of milk, 200ml | 200 | Cup of instant coffee, 125ml | 80 | Glass of apple juice, 200ml | 190 |
| Cup of tea, 250ml | 35 | Glass of wine, 125ml | 120 | Orange, 100g | 50 |
| Slice of bread, 30g | 135 | Bread with cheese, 30g + 10g | 90 | Bag of potato crisps, 200g | 185 |
| Egg, 40g | 135 | Tomato, 70g | 13 | Hamburger, 150g | 2400 |
| Potato, 100g | 25 | Apple, 100g | 70 | Bovine leather shoes | 8000 |
| Sheet of A4, 80 g/m² | 10 | Cotton tee-shirt, medium 500g | 4100 | Microchip, 2g | 32 |
| Source: http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=1&sid=5&tid=48&cid=326 | |||||
Eten van dichtbij
Werkplaats 10 - Eten van dichtbij
Vorige week verscheen een nieuwe uitgave van het blad “Werkplaats voor de Leefomgeving” van de Koninklijke Nederlandse HeideMaatschappij (KNHM). Deze 10e uitgave van dit blad heeft als thema “Eten van dichtbij” en gaat onder meer over stadsboeren, pergolabedrijven, stad-plattelandrelaties en publieke sector catering. Verder bevat het tal van korte beschrijvingen van en web-links naar initiatieven over regionale voedselvoorziening uit zowel Nederland als andere landen. De diversiteit aan activiteiten en benaderingen is zonder meer indrukwekkend. Voor een ieder die geïnteresseerd is in verschillende vormen en aspecten van regionale voedselvoorziening en/of stad-platteland relaties biedt dit themanummer een informatief en toegankelijk overzicht.
Know your farmer, know your food
Recently I joined a Dutch internet Sustainable Food group. Today the convenor of this group informed the members about a new initiative of the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture): “Know your farmer, know your food”. The aim of this USDA initiative is to help more Americans understand where their food comes from and how they can support local food economies in their communities. The initiative was announced by USDA secretary Tom Vilsack in a YouTube video:
“An American people that is more engaged with their food supply will create new income opportunities for American agriculture. Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food.”
While the White House kitchen garden and Obama’s idea to have a weekly farmers’ market at the White House (see my blog posted on 4 September) could have been perceived as ‘window dressing’, this USDA initiative surely gives the impression that the Obama administration is seriously attempting to fundamentally change US agrofood and rural development policy. Will, in this case, Obama’s campaign slogan – “Yes, we can” – become true?
Sustainable food planning conference – reminder & update
As mentioned in my blog of 28 August 2009 the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP), the International Studygroup on Multiple Use of Land (ISOMUL) and the Rural Sociology Group are hosting the first European Sustainable Food Planning conference. The conference will take place at De Kemphaan in the city of Almere in the Netherlands on 9 and 10 October 2009. It is still possible to register for this conference. If you are interested to participate in this conference, please apply by e-mail to corine.diepeveen@wur.nl. Costs for participation are € 100,- (incl. drinks, lunches and diner).
Since the first announcement a couple of weeks ago, the conference programme has changed slightly. Below you can find the most recent version of the programme:
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Day 1 – Generating ideas, exchanging experiences and comparing perspectives |
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| 09.00 – 09.30 |
Welcome and coffee/tea |
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| 09.30 – 09.45 | Food and planning: an introduction to the conference | Prof. Kevin Morgan (Professor of Governance & Development, Cardiff University, UK) |
| 09.45 – 10.00 | Including food and agriculture in urban planning: the Almere approach | Mr. Henk Mulder (director urban planning Almere) |
| 10.00 – 11.00 |
Session 1: Setting the scene |
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| 10.00 – 10.30 | An integrated and territorial perspective on food studies, policy and planning | Prof. Han Wiskerke (Chair of Rural Sociology – Wageningen University, Netherlands) |
| 10.30 – 11.00 | Feeding the city: practices, challenges and lessons from developing countries | Mr. Henk de Zeeuw (director of the RUAF Foundation) |
| 11.00 – 11.30 |
Coffee/tea break |
|
| 11.30 – 13.00 |
Session 2: Theoretical perspectives and academic issues |
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| 11.30 – 12.00 | Reconnecting consumers and producers: dynamics, diversity and potentials of alternative food networks | Prof. Gianluca Brunori (Professor of Agriculture Economics – Pisa University, Italy) |
| 12.00 – 12.30 | Urban food and public spaces: planning for security and sustainability | Dr. Roberta Sonnino (Lecturer in Environmental Planning – Cardiff University, UK) |
| 12.30 – 13.00 | Food and the city: the links between food, public health and sustainable urban development | Dr. Martin Caraher (Reader in Food & Health Policies – City University London, UK) |
| 13.00 – 14.00 |
Lunch break |
|
| 14.00 – 15.30 |
Session 3: Food planning practices and policies |
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| 14.00 – 14.30 | Food and agriculture in Europe’s peri-urban regions | Mrs. Dwarshuis (President of Peri-Urban Regions Platform Europe – PURPLE) |
| 14.30 – 14.50 | The practice of food planning in New York city | Dr. Nevin Cohen (Associate Professor in Urban Studies – New School for Liberal Arts, New York) |
| 14.50 – 15.10 | The practice of food planning in New York state | Mr. Bob Lewis (senior planner New York State) |
| 15.10 – 15.30 | Amsterdam’s food strategy (“Proeftuin Amsterdam”) | Mr. Bart Pijnenburg MSc (Programme manager Proeftuin Amsterdam) |
| 15.30 – 16.00 |
Coffee/tea break |
|
| 16.00 – 18.00 | Excursion to City Farm Almere | Tineke van den Berg (urban farmer) |
| 19.30 – 22.30 |
Diner (Restaurant De Kemphaan – Almere) |
|
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Day 2 – Towards an agenda for sustainable food planning |
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| 09.00 – 09.30 |
Welcome and coffee/tea |
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| 09.30 – 10.00 | Including food in planning studies and planning practices: experiences from the USA | Prof. Jerry Kaufman (Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning – University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) |
| 10.00 – 10.45 | Issues, topics, themes for a sustainable food planning agenda (plenary inventory) | Moderated by Prof. Arnold van der Valk (Chair of Land Use Planning – Wageningen University, NL) |
| 10.45 – 11.15 |
Coffee/tea break |
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| 11.15 – 12.45 | Developing the building blocks for a sustainable food planning agenda (parallel working sessions) | |
| 12.45 – 14.00 |
Lunch break |
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| 14.00 – 14.45 | Plenary presentation of and discussion about results of parallel working sessions | Moderated by Prof. Terry Marsden (Professor of Environmental Planning – Cardiff University, UK) |
| 14.45 – 15.00 | Sustainable food planning in Europe: concluding reflection and look ahead | Prof. Kevin Morgan (Professor of Governance & Development, Cardiff University, UK) |
| 15.00 |
Coffee & tea / end of conference |
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Rural Sociology Wageningen University 