In the light of the debate on how to feed the world’s growing population and what type of agriculture is needed, a video by the Food Myth Busters takes a firm position: we do not need corporate agriculture, actually we are even better of without it. In the video they demystify claims upholded by corporate businesses with some facts. I’m however sure that these are not the facts the CEO of Wageningen UR has in mind when proclaiming that further intensification of agriculture is needed (in fact he is arguing for a further industrialization of agriculture according the famous Dutch model and promoting a joint venture of corporate business and science, ergo: corporate science) to secure food provision for 9 billion people. Have a look yourself and make up your mind:
Category Archives: Food
Local food hip and happening
Lots of anecdotical stories buzz around for who is looking for the local trend in food. A local ‘snackbar’ (de Patat Koning) in Rotterdam contacted local farmers for local potatoes. My colleague Jan Willem van der Schans rightly observed; ‘why can you get ten different sauces on your fries but no choice in which fries you eat’. It makes a difference from which potato the french fries are made said the connoisseur. Equally, the burger is localising. Instead of imported beef, old Dutch breeds are being rediscovered for their meat, such as the ‘blaarkop’ cow. Some foreign breeds of cows used for grazing in conservation areas have difficulty adapting to the richness of the fodder compared to their own more harsh environments. The ‘blaarkop’ is adapted to local climate, and aparantly makes excellent hamburgers……. Continue reading
Localising the food economy in Arnhem?
Von Thunen’s famous ring model
Can the city-region of Arnhem be self-suffient for food? Certainly not for meat, but surprisingly for quite a few other product categories such as potatoes, eggs and most probably vegetables. And suppose we reduce our meat intake, could the region then also produce wheat for bread consumption?
Today five students of the Academic Consultancy Training course presented their recommendations to Stichting CASA in Arnhem. CASA is a non-profit for Architecture and urban development in Arnhem which focused on food and the city this year with a program called ‘Taste the city’. CASA commissioned research with the Science Shop on the question of regional food production and consumption in the region Arnhem and development of a food strategy. Continue reading
Rhetorical devices in feeding the world
Recently there were two food events here, a university run Food4you series of events and a series organised by critical student organisations Boerengroep and Otherwise called Food for All. The very different approaches to food are captured in their titles. The latter series finished yesterday on World Food Day with the Dutch premiere of the film Crops for the Future. An instructive film about agroecology practices and food sovereignty from all over the world. Examples from the field were backed up with interviews with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food , with an author of the Agriculture at a Crossroads report and others. The message; we urgently need to move to another paradigm, the coming century is one of biology/diversity instead of chemistry. Still, it seems that the protagonists of a gone-by era are capable of organising a stage for themselves, the PR machine of Louise Fresco seems overheated. What are their rhetorical devices? Continue reading
Interested in multidisciplinarity and traditional food?
Rural Sociology has been participating in an intensive programme on Micro-organisms and Traditional Food since last year. In the beginning of this year the first students experienced this programme by spending 2 weeks in Rumania; see the experiences of Cho-Ye Yuen, Hylke Sibtsen and Rineke Boonen. During these intensive weeks, you follow lectures by various scholars from around Europe focusing on both social and microbiological sciences, you work on group assignments and go on excursions. This time the IP takes place in Ghent from 4 to 15 February 2013.
If you are a Master student at Wageningen University and would like to join this programme, please contact Els Hegger for more information. To get a better idea of the programme, our colleague Petra Derkzen blogged about her experience last year during four different days; first, second, third and fourth.
Rural Sociology Wageningen University 