Category Archives: Food

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 →

Food Sovereignty: A critical dialogue – live streaming of conference

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Food sovereignty conferenceFollowing the Yale conference (see the post), the ISS-Agrarian, Food & Environmental Studies (AFES), Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS), Transnational Institute (TNI), Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, Land Deal Politics Initiatives (LDPI) and The Journal of Peasant Studies organised a Food sovereignty Conference in The Hague, Friday 24.

Download the programme. There will be live streaming of the conference.

Food Otherwise Conference – February 21, 22 2014, Wageningen

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Food Otherwise Conference: Towards fair and sustainable food and agriculture systems
February 21, 22 2014 Wageningen.

More and more farmers, consumers, scientists and civil society organisations are working towards sustainable and fair ways of producing food. They are forging new relationships between farmers and consumers. They offer creative, dynamic and diverse alternatives to large-scale, anonymous and industrialised food production and the increasing influence of transnational corporations. Do you want to learn, experience, think along and discuss new and feasible food and agriculture systems with others? Would you like to build bridges and help to achieve a more sustainable and fair food and agriculture system? Do you want to get to know sustainable (young) farmers? Become inspired by innovative examples from the Netherlands, Flanders and abroad? Then come to our two day conference in Wageningen on 21 and 22 February 2014!

Keynote speakers • Olivier de Schutter, UN rapporteur on the right to food • Pablo Tittonell, professor Farming Systems Ecology Wageningen University • Hanny van Geel, farmer and board member of La Via Campesina Europe • Vandana Shiva, Indian scientist and activist (tbc).

For whom? Farmers, consumers, scientists, beekeepers, students, artists, professionals in the food and agro sectors, policymakers, politicians and journalists. Translation English-Dutch provided in the plenary sessions. Some workshops will be in English. Workshops and discussions around several themes, such as: • Local food networks: from producer to consumer • The power of large agricultural corporations • Agro-ecology • Fair incomes for farmers • Urban agriculture • Permaculture / food forests • Fair trade and Agricultural policies • Land rights • Seeds and biodiversity • Soil and closed-loop agriculture

Urban Greens Rural Blues – the future city

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Urban Greens Rural BluesUrban Green Rural Blues is the 2014 theme of Stichting RUW. The opening event will be January 21 with lectures and a debate  on how the future city will look like. From 19.00-21.00 in the Public Library (BBLTHK), Stationsstraat 2, Wageningen. Free entrance and free drinks afterwards.

Since 2008 more people live in cities than in rural areas. The world population is growing and urbanisation is expected to continue. As a result, pressure on urban areas is increasing with growing issues and challenges; concerning the urban environment, waste management, traffic, housing and food supply. At the same time, cities are vibrant hubs of creativity where inspirational and successful ideas for a green, clean and healthy living environment emerge.

How can we envision the future of the city? And that of the countryside? How are urban-rural landscapes, communities and relations changing? Join us at our opening activity on the 21st of January to find out!

Rutger de Graaf (TUDelft, DeltaSync, Blue Revolution) will explain why we need to start building on water and Jan-Willem van der Schans (WUR, LEI) will discuss the role of urban food strategies in building a sustainable city. Elma Schoenmaker (BelW climate-green design) will show us several eco-smart, climate-adaptive and bio-mimicry designs.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/698683773497788/

Symbiotic chicken supplies – food provisioning in Dar es Salaam

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By Marc Wegerif. PhD Candidate, Rural Sociology Group Wageningen University. Marc Wegerif is carrying out research on food provisioning in Dar es Salaam.

Diagrams made by Jerryt Krombeen, a freelance designer and advisor working with own company (http://jerryt.nl/) on: design, urbanism, landscape architecture, and public space. Jerryt is completing his Masters at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (http://www.ahk.nl/en/architecture/ ) and joined a group of students in a project on planning for food markets in Dar es Salaam.

By Jerryt Krombeen (http://jerryt.nl/)

By Jerryt Krombeen
(http://jerryt.nl/)

It is 5am, still dark, I am at the Shikilango people’s market in Dar es Salaam, a variety of vehicles are arriving and stopping in the street next to the market, the clucking of chickens fills the air. Motorbikes with two large woven baskets on the back, tied on top of each other, park. The baskets carrying up to 50 chickens each are arranged on the ground. Small Suzuki pick-up trucks and other vehicles with wood and wire frames on the back arrive with hundreds of chickens, the various buyers crowding around them as the morning business picks up and the sun begins to light the sky. Some customers are buying directly from the vans and motorbikes. Some of the butchers, identifiable in their white overalls and boots, are also buying direct from the vehicles to fill orders they already have. I watch the scene while sitting on a large rock on the edge of the road. The man sitting next to me on the rock is selling plastic bags of different sizes and cigarettes to customers and traders. Most of the people with the vans and motorbikes also have a stall in the market or cooperate with someone who does. The chickens not sold directly in the morning are transferred to the market and sold there through the rest of the day.

Under a high roof that covers a raised concrete platform there are thousands of chickens in lines of cages four levels high. The alley ways left between the cages are busy with people selling and buying chickens, negotiating or just talking. There is an alley at a lower level between the platform and six white tiled chicken slaughtering and cleaning areas that run along two sides of the platform.

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