Category Archives: Food

Feeding the world sustainable – agroecology v industrial agriculture

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Feeding the world in a sustainable way is vehemently debated these days. In international fora the debate is not just about how to increase food production to feed the world’s growing population but also whether increasing food production is adressing the key issue of the relation between poverty and hunger. Increasing food production is not a neutral matter. Although some voices like to put it that way to sustain their claim that ‘facts’ show that their solution is the only right one. A solution is never neutral just because of the combination of technological and institutional means and the social and environmental impact it has. This is not new at all all. The impact of the (first) Green Revolution has been heavely disputed and this socalled neutralness of technology has been key issue in the massive techology and innovation studies of last decades. One cannot simply ignore the wider impact of technological fixes in the debate about how to provide the world’s population in a sustainable way.

In an editorial Eric Holt-Gimenez,  Executive Director of Food First / Institute for Food and Development Policy (www.foodfirst.org) in response to a recent study in Nature has added a contribution to this ongoing debate. He argues that there is a difference between between producing more food and ending hunger.  Read his editorial at on what kind of agriculture can best solve the problem of the growing number of hungry people: agroecology or conventional industrial agriculture at http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/farmer-organisations/opinion-eric-holt-gimenez or at Nourshing the planet (the weblog of the Worldwatch Institute). One can also see video of a lecture on Food movements, agroecology, and the future of food and farming.

The Christensen Fund made an interesting infographics evaluating the major differences between agroecology and industrial agriculture:

Beyond Divides: An International Winter School and Forum on Contemporary Agri-food Issues

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The Marie Curie Initial Training Network PUREFOOD project team will host a winter school and forum in Barcelona from 12-22 November 2012. The forum will be a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary event, with the joint participation of the PUREFOOD research fellows and supervisory team, a diverse group of external Ph.D. students, and respected local and international scholars and practitioners. The forum will create an atmosphere of debate, exchange, and collaboration.  The academic program will feature three distinct learning modes – expert-led discussions, peer-led paper review, and thematically integrated site visits – and will include modules oriented to some of the most prominent themes in agri-food system scholarship today.

Key themes are:

  • Food security, rights and sovereignty;
  • Social imperatives, ethics and justice;
  • Food and alterity;
  • Food policy and governance;
  • State, market and society;
  • Innovation;
  • Tradition.

Speakers at the Winter school are:

  • Dr. Patricia Allen, Director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, University of California, Santa Cruz, United States
  • Dr. Jesús Contreras Hernández, Professor of Social Anthropology, Director of the Food and Foodways Observatory, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
  • Dr. Mike Goodman, Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, King’s College London, United Kingdom
  • Dr. James Kirwan, Reader in Food Studies and Society, Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
  • Dr. F. Xavier Medina, Director, Department Food Systems, Culture & Society at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Academic Director at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

For more information about the Winter School click on  Beyond Divides – Program and Application Form. If you want to participate, please complete the application form and send it to Jessica Spayde (spaydejj@cardiff.ac.uk) by 3 October 2012.

Uitgegeten? #3 ‘De Toekomst van het Platteland’

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Zonder het platteland geen voedsel! Maar, heeft u er wel eens bij stilgestaan dat ons voedselsysteem en consumptiepatroon van invloed is op hoe het buitengebied eruit ziet? De afgelopen decennia voelden veel boeren zich genoodzaakt om te investeren in megastallen of om te stoppen. Dit heeft niet alleen economische consequenties, maar is ook bepalend voor andere waarden die we aan het platteland verbinden, zoals; een aantrekkelijk landschap, een gezonde leefomgeving en kennis over de herkomst van voedsel. Tijdens het derde en laatste publieksdebat van de serie Uitgegeten? gaan we met ‘waarden-experts’ in op de toekomst van het agrarisch platteland. Welke waarden willen we behouden of juist ontwikkelen voor de toekomst? Hoe zou het platteland eruit zien als we onze voedselproductie vanuit die waarden zouden organiseren? En, kan duurzaam voedsel de link tussen boer en burger herstellen?

Met: Ton Duffhues (Stichting Atelier Waarden van het Land), Ina Horlings (onderzoeker en docent rurale sociologie, Wageningen Universiteit), Maria Hopman (arts en hoogleraar integrale fysiologie, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen). Met cabaret van Irene van der Aart.

woensdag 26 sept | LUX zaal 7 | aanvang 20.00 uur | entree gratis, met proeverij regionale producten van Oregional | kaarten bestellen via www.lux-nijmegen.nl of aan de kassa van LUX

Uitgegeten? De toekomst van duurzaam eten is een verdiepende debatreeks over duurzaam voedsel georganiseerd door stichting Landwaard in samenwerking met LUX. Onderwerpen die eerder in de reeks aan de orde kwamen waren; de nieuwe voedselketen en stadslandbouw.

Edible public space eaten by whom?

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Growing food in public spaces can be a great awareness raising campaign. A beautiful example is given here from the city of Adernach which was in the news this summer at various German tv stations (quite appropriate that the Dutch call the news in the summer “cucumber times”). There are also projects in England such as in Leeds or in The Netherlands such as the one in my neighbourhood (see earlier posts here and here). Continue reading →

Embedded in a crisis, IRSA (3)

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The majority of our purchases, be it food or something else, are done through market relations which are increasingly void of the personal, of long-term social relations and social investment. Whereas early theories on the social embeddedness of markets (Polanyi and Granovetter) are popular again amongst academics nowadays, I wonder if we can actually really imagine how deep embeddedness could or should go in the face of abstract and almost anonymous transactions through which we procure everyday. How often are we in situations where the relationship is as important as the product acquired, maybe even unrelated to the product acquired? Our current routines and realities shape how we interpret literature and imagine the possible.

Efficient food procuring – a chore that needs to be done – does make it quite impossible for me to imagine a buyer – seller relation that goes beyond regularity and chitchat. Why would I invest more than knowing my local butcher by name and where he gets his meat and a comment on the weather while buying meat, my local veggiebox, eggs and cheese (yes we have an unusual butcher in town) on my way home from work?

My Spanish colleagues told me that they are in the midst of finding out how to come by in an economy and democracy that is imploding. No money to buy in the supermarket? Get yourself a network! my colleague Ignacio exclaimed referring to those who would previously looked down on his ‘anarchist’ ideas. And land. The first land occupations are occurring in Andalusia he told me, mimicking land rights claims of the Movimiento Sem Terra from Brasil.

“Unpacking the spatial fixes of the previous regime” is how Terry Marsden called this in his keynote. The re-orientation of property rights and regimes has not received enough attention from research in the last 20 years. But cutting through the established property rights concepts and practices is needed urgently he added. This counts as well for concepts of market relations it seems to me.