WFSC Presentations at Academia Engelberg
Last week, World Food System Center Executive Director Michelle Grant and seven alumni of the WFSC Summer School program participated in Academia Engelberg’s 13th Dialogue on Science. This year’s conference focused on the topic of food security, giving the audience an opportunity to hear presentations about the food systems in the home countries of the alumni: Kenya, China, the United States, and Switzerland.
The group also organized four interactive workshops in which conference participants were presented with the challenge of addressing a country-specific food system challenge. Each of the speakers had previously attended one of the summer school courses organized by the World Food System Center, where they studied the topic of food and nutrition security and related challenges using a food systems perspective. To date, approximately 75 students from 30 countries have attended the WFSC course in Rheinau, Switzerland (in 2013 and 2014) or in Bangalore, India (2014).
Workshops
Danielle Tendall, a Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich (Sustainable Agroecosystems group), and Benjamin Gräub, a Programme Analyst with the FAO, led a group of 25 through an exercise to develop interventions for the Swiss food system using a stakeholder analysis and a resilience framework.
Daniel Owino Wamunga, from the Ministry of Agriculture in Kenya, and Jared Omondi Buoga, with the Tembea Youth Centre for Sustainable Development presented conference attendees with a real-life scenario from their home province in central Kenya. Their workshop asked participants to imagine themselves as stakeholders in a project currently in development that aims at creating and scaling up sustainable poultry value chains that provide youth employment, close nutrient cycles and contribute to addressing iron and protein deficiencies in the region.
Food System Workshops (photo credits: Academia Engelberg)
Jiaqi Huang from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing discussed the food system challenges related to urbanization and rural migration in China. She then worked with participants to develop potential solutions and evaluate the multi-faceted impacts of the proposals.
ETH Zurich PhD student, Betsy Verhoeven (Sustainable Agroecosystems group) and Faris Mohammed, from the University of California, Berkeley coordinated a participatory role play during a workshop about the US food system and some of its major challenges it faces.
Workshop leaders and conference participants alike learned something new about the respective food systems and walked away with a greater appreciation of the value of a food systems perspective.
The next summer school course will take place in August 2015. A call for applications will be launched in the spring next year.