As part of a voluntary course offered by Rural Sociology, 16 students visited Italy to look at two different examples of global food security in action. Emmelien Venselaar, who studies International Development, has written a short blog wherein she reflects on her experiences. Happy reading.
Students get ready to observe politics in action at the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (photo by X. Jiang)
As part of the Capita Selecta “Global Food Security Governance” from chair group RSO, 16 students got the chance to visit the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome. This Committee is an intergovernmental body addressing global food security governance. It aims to be inclusive and thus takes the interests of states, civil society, NGO’s and the private sector into account. In practice this means that a discussion can be conducted by Coca Cola, Finland, peasants and a representative of the FAO. This conference is an annual event hosted by the Food and Agricultural Organization, a UN agency, in Rome. During three days we experienced what is it like to formulate international guidelines at nighttime, watch African students pitch their business ideas, discuss matters over lunch on the roof terrace of the FAO office, take one minute espresso breaks to get us through the day and network our way through the side events. As students, we are quite used to short nights, networking events and important discussions. Only this time it was much more official than at our student associations or student board events back in Wageningen. This time we were talking politics.
Rural Sociology Wageningen University 