Food Sovereignty conference Yale and ISS – 30 videos, 94 papers and 12 JPS articles available

The conference “Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue” was held twice: on 14-15 September 2013 in Yale University, USA, and on 24 January 2014 at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague. It brought together the world’s leading scholars and activists, both sympathetic and supportive of the idea of food sovereignty, as well as those highly skeptical of the concept. They fostered a critical dialogue on the issue examining its various meanings, interpretations, and political implications.

The Transnational Institute has published 30 video clips from of the presentations held during the conferences at Yale University in September 2013 and at ISS in January 2014.

The combined processes towards the Yale conference and the ISS colloquium, there are now 94 working papers and 3 Discussion Notes. You can download these papers at : http://www.iss.nl/research/research_programmes/political_economy_of_resources_environment_and_population_per/networks/critical_agrarian_studies_icas/food_sovereignty_a_critical_dialogue/

Journal of Peasant Studies: 12 articles available free of charge 

12 papers by Henry Bernstein, Bina Agarwal, Jack Kloppenburg, Phil McMichael, Marc Edelman, Ryan Isakson, Jennifer Clapp, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Madeleine Fairbairn, Annette Desmarais & Hannah Wittman, Kim Burnett & Sophia Murphy, and Peter Rosset & Maria Elena Martinez-Torres are officially published by The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS), one of the co-organizers of the critical dialogue. As contribution to the critical dialogue, JPS has made all these 12 articles downloadable from its website free of charge in a Special Issue:  http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fjps20/41/6

Advies voor energiecoöperaties

Esther Veen's avataronderzoekerstadslandbouw

Bijna alle MSc studenten van Wageningen Universiteit volgen het vak Academic Consultancy Training. Hierin vervullen ze als groep een consultancy opdracht voor een ‘echte’ opdrachtgever. Ze worden bijgestaan door een inhoudelijk expert en een coach op het proces. Ongeveer een jaar geleden heb ik voor het eerst zo’n groepje studenten gecoacht. Een leerzame en erg leuke ervaring. Ik heb nu voor een tweede keer een groepje mogen begeleiden. ‘Mijn’ groepje deed een opdracht voor SamenGroen. SamenGroen levert zonnepanelen en ondersteunt energiecoöperaties. De groep beantwoordde de volgende vraag:

Hoe kan SamenGroen haar tijd en middelen efficiënt inzetten voor het adviseren en begeleiden van energiecoöperaties?

Het komen tot een goed adviesrapport is een heel proces. Eerst moeten de studenten de precieze vraag van de opdrachtgever definiëren, wat nog best een opgave was. Wat wil hij precies weten, wat is het doel achter zijn vraag, en wat is mogelijk binnen…

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Food Otherwise conference – a video impression

As posted before the Food Otherwise conference has been very succesfull. A bi-lingual (Dutch/English) video impression is now available:

FoodNET – where EU food projects meet

As Rural Sociology Group we have particiapted in several food related EU-funded research projects for all of which a website or weblog was created. Most recent food projects Rural Sociology has participated in are PUREFOOD, Foodlinks, GLAMUR & SUPURBFOOD. TRANSMANGO has just started and a website will soon be launched.

To better integrate and disseminate the findings research projects and to facilitate discussion and interaction among among all those involved and interested FoodNET has been launced: http://foodnet.ning.com. FoodNET replaces the Sustainable Food weblog.

FoodNET is as a platform that will keep you posted on latest research on sustainable food provisioning and farming. FoodNET is a website and blog in one. The FoodNet Team is on Twitter as well: @foodnet_eu. Latest Tweet is shown at the right of this weblog, below our Rural Sociology WU tweets. We will also have the FoodNET tweets published at our Rural Sociology Group Facebook page.

Food Tank: Five Ways to Change the Food System

About the Food Tank:

Our food system is broken. Some people don’t have enough food, while others are eating too much. There’s only one way to fix this problem—and it starts with you and me.

Food Tank: The Food Think Tank is for the 7 billion people who have to eat every day. We will offer solutions and environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty by creating a network of connections and information for all of us to consume and share. Food Tank is for farmers and producers, policy makers and government leaders, researchers and scientists, academics and journalists, and the funding and donor communities to collaborate on providing sustainable solutions for our most pressing environmental and social problems.

As much as we need new thinking on global food system issues, we also need new doing. Around the world, people and organizations have developed innovative, on-the-ground solutions to the most pressing issues in food and agriculture. Through years of field visits (and years of trying to eat better in her own community) our President Danielle Nierenberg has helped to highlight and promote these best practices. Today, we hope to bridge the domestic and global food issues by highlighting how hunger, obesity, climate change, unemployment, and other problems can be solved by more research and investment in sustainable agriculture.

Food Tank will highlight hope and success in agriculture. We will feature innovative ideas that are already working on the ground, in cities, in kitchens, in fields and in laboratories. These innovations need more attention, more research, and ultimately more funding to be replicated and scaled-up. And that is where we need you. We all need to work together to find solutions that nourish ourselves and protect the planet.

See the clip how the food systems can be changed in the five ways: