Please find the event recording here.
Part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival, this panel discussion explored the impact that our food systems have on the environment, and the changes we could make to ensure they are resilient and sustainable at national and global levels.
Climate change is already affecting global food supplies and yields are falling. COVID-19 has shown us that we need new food systems which can withstand external shocks. The Panel discussed how we can create the conditions for resilient and sustainable systems both nationally and internationally, taking into consideration the needs of the different actors and countries that make up the food supply chain.
The panel saw reasons to be hopeful, amongst which:
Smaller-scale growers and local suppliers in some places are adapting to the challenges of climate-change more easily than big agriculture and monocultures; potentially leading to a more diverse, locally-sourced diet, with a smaller carbon and water foot-print.
In some countries, food supply chains have been badly affected by the pandemic, so farmers have started to use digital marketing tools to sell their products to local people, rather than global companies. A good lesson for the future?
Food waste is still a huge problem throughout the world. In western countries, a lot of food-waste happens at home; but perhaps this is where smart regulation and smart education of consumers could be really effective.
Consumers have power when they act collectively at the interface of states, corporations and civil society.
More about our Panel:
Professor Cristiane Derani, Professor of International, Environmental and Economic Law, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brasil.
Dr Shailaja Fennell, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge.
Professor Ken Giller, Professor of Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Professor Jaideep Prabhu, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business & Enterprise, University of Cambridge.
Chair:
Professor Howard Griffiths, Professor of Plant Ecology, Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Text supplied by Abigail Youngman.
