A Glimpse of June: Gearing up for the 2014 UVM Food Systems Summit!

As we struggle to stay warm in VT’s frigid winter temperatures, I’m busy thinking a lot about next June. But it’s not just the warm weather and outdoor farmers’ markets I’m looking forward to—we’re also deep in planning for the third annual UVM Food Systems Summit! Here’s a sneak peak at what’s in the works.

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Themes: The food system is big, complex, and multifaceted. In order to focus our discussions for the Summit, we developed some overarching themes to help us frame up and understand the issues at hand:

  • Geopolitical context: This theme is about power in the food system, and food sovereignty from a local and global perspective. Who should own and control the food system? How does current policy and trade policy affect local outcomes?
  • Biophysical constraints: This theme is about land use and environmental considerations of agricultural production. How much additional food production capacity do we need and where? How much land base would we need to feed the world’s population if we produced our food ecologically and were able to reduce wasted food? What assumptions or adjustments do we need to make about diet and nutrition to do so? Can you be ecologically, economically, hydrologically, and energetically sound and intensive?
  • Behavior and culture: This theme is about how social factors affect what and how we eat. What do we know about the human ability to change our behavior, to proactively adapt? How do cultural values influence food practice? How do these considerations affect the questions above?

Format: We’re lining up a day and a half of thought-provoking sessions with panelists and keynote speakers (check out our draft schedule for details).

UVM Food Summit 2013. Speaker Tamar Adler.If you’ve been to the Summit in the past 2 years, you’ll recall that we featured multiple speakers in an afternoon of short talks. It was a great way to highlight a wide range of people doing inspiring work to revolutionize the food system. What we heard from the audience is that people liked the variety of speakers, but wanted more opportunities to interact—to really dig into the difficult questions faced by scholars, activists, policy makers, farmers, and eaters of all walks of life. So this year we have re-envisioned the Summit as a day and a half gathering to maximize the opportunity for dialogue, networking, and engaged discussion on the pressing food systems issues facing our world.

Keynotes: We’re delighted to announce two of our keynote speaker! Eric Holt-Giménez (Executive Director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy) and Rosamond Naylor (Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University) will each provide an hour long talk and participate on a wrap-up panel at the end of the Summit.

Panels: The Summit will feature three panel discussions with presentations on competitively selected academic papers (if you haven’t seen our Call for Papers yet, check it out—abstract submissions are due February 15). The panels will also include policy makers, activists, and other food system innovators, to ensure multiple perspectives are represented.

Reception cropped Celebration: We would be remiss to talk, talk, talk about the food system and not take some time to enjoy the wonderful food we have here in Vermont! In honor of our local food system, the Summit will include a reception highlighting local products and participants will be encouraged to dine at the many Burlington restaurants that source regionally produced foods.

How to participate: Registration is scheduled to open in mid-February. We hope you’ll join us for this signature UVM event!

The Summit will immediately precede Collaboration and Innovation Across the Food System, the joint annual meeting of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) and the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS), June 18-22 at the UVM campus. The UVM Food Systems Summit is an independently organized event and may be attended either alone or in combination with the AFHVS/ASFS conference.

Posted in: Economic, Environmental, Health, Social.