Workshops

The Irish Forum for International Agricultural Development (IFIAD) held its 2023 Annual Conference on the theme of Sustainability and Agency in Transforming Food Systems. The UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment 2023 re-affirmed the need for healthy, more sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems. Sustainability and agency are key components in transforming food systems. Securing sustainability in food systems will safeguard the environment and alleviate levels of hunger and malnutrition while prioritising agency can support equality in decision making agricultural practices and distribution.
The themes of sustainability and agency have grown in prominence in recent years and have been proposed as additional components in assessing food security, alongside, access, availability, utilisation and stability. It is against this backdrop that we are excited to bring together leading experts and organisations’ representing a broad spectrum of experience and perspectives.

16th European Public Health Conference: “Our Food, Our Health, Our Earth: A Sustainable Future for Humanity” 8-11 November 2023 in Dublin, Ireland, in person only. Over the next decade we will all make choices which will determine the future of our advanced technological society. The COVID-19 and monkeypox pandemics, through which the world is now living, are as graphic an example as could be desired of the instability of our model of life, and the need for action on One Health. We have now run out of road on climate emergency. 2021 was the warmest year on record, and 2022 and 2023 are likely to beat that record. The global climate is changing rapidly. Building a future, any kind of future, for us and for our children, demands a new attention to sustainability. It’s tempting to despair, to give up. Let’s not. This conference hopes to open up part of this discussion, with a focus on health, and health care. We can do better, and we have to do better. Greening the EPH Conference – EPH Conference is committed to reducing the environmental impact of the conference and finding ways to be more environmentally responsible. These are our initiatives we have taken together with The CCD, venue of the EPH Conference 2023, to minimize the impact of the conference on the environment.

On 4 and 5 of December 2023, the European Commission organised a conference in Brussels entitled “Food 2030: green and resilient food systems” to showcase achievements of EU food systems related projects, explore future research and innovation orientations and levers of change. The EC aims to convene a wide range of actors and policy makers for this in-person event, which was also web streamed and recorded for those unable to travel. Transforming our food systems for sustainability and resilience is pertinent and urgent to achieve EU Green Deal goals. The food system is highly complex, characterised by uncertainty, multiple drivers, impacts and interconnected sectors, requiring trade-offs. Acting simultaneously on many fronts is the only key to success. This is why we need a systems approach to understand the challenges and to target transformational change through a coherent set of policies, initiatives, and investments. The role of Research and Innovation (R&I) policy has finally been recognised as key to unravelling the complexities and catalysing solutions. In 2016, DG Research & Innovation launched the Food 2030 initiative, which set out an ambitious and impact-driven R&I policy framework for sustainable food systems, that is being deployed via Horizon Europe. Follow for more updates: @EUScienceInnov and #Food2030EU

Regeneration International Hosts the People’s Food Summit on World Food Day, October 16 each year. It is the only 24-hour global, participatory, virtual summit starting in Oceania and moving westwards through the time zones of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. The People’s Food Summit enhances the connectedness of global work amongst numerous like-minded organizations.

The People’s Food Summit is a truly participatory summit that empowers most of the world’s food producers: the family farmers, pastoralists, and foresters who produce 70% of our food. We seek to engage hundreds of thousands by exchanging information and sharing inspiring stories. We present proven, farmer-based, real-world examples that are the future of our food and farming systems. These include agroecology, organic and regenerative farming, permaculture, agroforestry, holistically managed grazing, and many other systems.

The 2021 and 2022 events were spectacularly successful, with over 500,000 people, each time,  from all regions of our world, tuning in to watch and listen to our numerous speakers and their essential topics. In 2022, we promoted videos that we regarded as highlights of each region and reached another 700,000 views, bringing the total views to 1,200,000. Because we reached so many people, this event had a very high impact and will continue to. The past events remain available through the same link.

Our hope for the outcomes:
1. Information Exchange
2. Creating connections where different groups can continue working together after
3. Stimulating a citizen-led research and storytelling journey
4. Starting a partnership where Regeneration International continues to enable the scale-up of projects
5. Increasing the reach of this vital information to hundreds of thousands of people

Humankind is confronted with multiple deeply rooted and interlinked crises, including in relation to climate, biodiversity, conflict, energy, consumer prices, inequality, food insecurity, malnutrition and health. Global food systems challenges call for a profound and swift transformation of how we produce, process, retail, consume food and dispose organic waste.

The September 2021 UN Secretary-General’s Food Systems Summit (UN FSS) created important momentum to trigger transformation. Contributing to the 2023 Stock-Taking Moment of the UN FSS follow-up process, this conference will look at how food systems need to be transformed to overcome these crises in order to minimize the risk of global collapse and achieve the SDGs.

The 21st Annual STS Conference Graz 2023 „Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies“ is organised by Science Technology and Society Unit of the Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science of Graz University of Technology. There is a track with sessions in Sustainable Food Systems including – F.1 Microbes in, for, around Food Systems – F.2 From the edge to the core: participatory food environment research in European cities – F.3 Food Justice in Alternative Food Networks: theoretical, empirical and transdisciplinary perspectives – F.4 (M)eating the future: technologies, materialities, and politics of food – F.5 How can universities support the transition to sustainable food systems?

The 1st Eastern Africa Agroecology Conference Transforming Food Systems for Responsible Production, Consumption, and Social Wellbeing aimed to invoke consciousness and motivate regional and continental communities to dialogue how to invest in interventions, which can ameliorate the negative impacts of the current unsustainable food systems by transitioning towards more environmentally friendly solutions with long-term vision and planning. Conference Theme: Strengthening Resilience and Sustainability in Food Systems for Environmental and Socioeconomic Development. Location: Nairobi, Kenya, 21–24 March 2023. The conference was a hybrid event comprising in-person attendance and live-streaming for on-line participants. Cost: 100-200 USD

ORFC – Oxford Real Farming Conference was held 4-6 January 2023 in both online and in person. The online archive is available on https://orfc.org.uk/orfc-archives/ The online conference is a mix of live-streamed sessions from Oxford and online-only sessions with farmers, food producers, activists, academics, authors and many others across six continents. Anything you miss will be recorded for you to catch up on, and each session will available for replay shortly after it has ended. All delegates outside Western Europe, the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand can join us for FREE. There is interpretation through COATI (Colectivo para la autogestión de tecnologías para la interpretación) to ensure that sessions are interpreted into many languages.

From Emily Norton, #OFC2023 Chair: “… The collective challenge is not just to avoid the mistakes of the past. Instead, it is to seek the systemic solutions that prevent poverty, environmental exploitation and ultimately conflict. In exploring the consequences of conflict on our farms and communities, we’re aware that we cannot rely on yesterday’s toolbox to fix today’s problems. Hence OFC23 aims to inspire a regeneration in our politics, our society and our supply chains, as well as our farms. This is also long overdue. It’s time to start farming a new future. See you at Oxford.”

Every year, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) discusses current topics and issues with global outreach. The 2023 GFFA addresses the issue “Food Systems Transformation: A Worldwide Response to Multiple Crises”.  The international community urgently has to develop and implement solutions to realise the right to adequate food. The only expedient solutions are those that address food security, the climate catastrophe, and the extinction of species alike. A comprehensive transformation of global food systems is of vital importance. The event is open to the public. The 2023 GFFA builds on the UN Food Systems Summit for this process. Its aim is to promote discussion and to explore possible ways for global and national collaboration in a spirit of partnership. 2000 visitors from politics, business, academia and civil society discuss how to bring about successful transformation. There is a special focus on the following four questions: 1) How can we create crisis-proof food systems? 2) How can we create climate-friendly food systems? 3) How can we preserve biological diversity? 4) How can we improve collaboration for sustainable global food systems?

You can find further information on the subject in the Backgroundpaper. The website also has Communiqués from the past 14 years.

This website continues to have loads of valuable resources for D-Ns working in urban areas. In December 2022, FAO co-hosted a High-Level Dialogue on “Sustainable Urban Food Systems for SDGs Acceleration” at the 17th Annual Session of the Global Forum on Human Settlements (GFHS). The Event had 3 Key Points: 1) Highlight the most urgent challenges urban food systems face to ensure access to healthy diets and reduce environmental ‘foodprint’. 2) Showcase concrete examples of successful practices to reduce urban food systems’ contribution to climate impact, including consumption patterns. 3) Identify gaps and share recommendations on the transition to sustainable urban food systems. GFHS Secretary General Mr. Lu Haifeng pointed out in his closing remarks that cities should concentrate on six priorities: 1) sustainable urban planning, 2) sustainable waste management, 3) efficient and stable transition to renewable energy, 4) green, low-carbon and smart buildings and communities, 5) people-oriented public space and resilient infrastructure, and 6) sustainable urban food system. By doing so, we can better achieve the goal of resilient, carbon neutral and nature-positive city, and more effectively coordinate to deal with climate crisis, energy crisis, economic crisis, food crisis and the biodiversity crisis for a safer and greener urban future.”

updated 2025 Jan