Sustainable Food Systems - Food for All Forever


The right technological solutions combined with the right policy directions for the future can effectively contribute to a sustainable and equitable global food system. A new global food system should assure that everybody has access to sufficient food and that poverty should be reduced significantly without doing damage to the natural environment

The Danish Academy of Technical Sciences, ATV, and the international Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, CAETS, hereby invite you to Copenhagen to participate in an international conference on 29 June 2010.

A challenged food system

Natural resources are the foundation of food production. Past successes in food production and distribution, have been obtained in part by unsustainable use of natural resources such as soil, water, energy and biodiversity. As a warming planet with an already large and rapidly increasing population, the earth faces a difficult debate about how to secure and distribute its future food supply in an equitable and sustainable manner.

Producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time fighting poverty and hunger, facing increasing challenges to use energy and other scarce natural resources more efficiently, preserving biodiversity and adapting to climate changes, are the main challenges which world food systems will face in the coming decades.


The winning solutions

ATV wishes to facilitate an open debate, a free exchange of ideas and discussion of new future-oriented solutions. ATV aims to bring universities, industry, agriculture, NGOs and GOs together. Our joint challenge is to identify the real problems and the effective solutions - which at the same time - will increase food production, reduce poverty and hunger and reduce over-exploitation of natural resources.

We believe that choosing the right technological solutions combined with the right future policy options can effectively contribute to assure a sustainable and equitable global food system.

The conference will set the scene and create a forum for a discussion on how to achieve triple win solutions and it will endeavour to clearly highlight the most crucial trade-offs in the food system. Achieving triple wins and choosing the right trade-offs in the food system and, thereby, create a sustainable food system for future generations is not an easy task; it will require more progressive research, reforms and policies than those seen until now. But we have to begin now to initiate changes essential for future generations.
 

Solution sessions

There will be four plenary, interactive solution sessions:

• Looking towards 2050 and beyond
  Income, distribution, population, food security, natural resources and climate

• Reforming the food production system
  Molecular biology, agro-ecological methods, aquaculture, land and water efficiency

• Rethinking the food processing chain
  Infrastructure, distribution, energy efficiency, recycling, packaging and storage facilities

• Moving towards economic incentives, improved governance and full costing
  Institutions, earmarking of payment, green taxes, ecosystem services, market-orientation
  and policy reforms
 

 

 

For further information on the programme and the conference, please continue to visit this website which will be updated on a regular basis.