Yale Food Systems Symposium: Feeding a Growing World – Perspectives in 2016
The Yale Food Systems Symposium (YFSS) is a student-led, interdisciplinary conference initiated by students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. This year, we also welcome the enthusiastic support of students from Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Management.
The conference has emerged from a school that prioritizes both research and non-academic professional development. The aim of the YFSS is to provide a space where researchers, practitioners, theorists, and eaters can come together to work towards the creation of a just, sustainable food system. An effort by students, for students (in a broad sense of the word), the YFSS privileges new ideas that push the conventional boundaries of food systems thinking. As such, it seeks to highlight emerging researchers, innovative projects, truly interdisciplinary thinking, and non-traditional collaboration.
The 2016 Yale Food Systems Symposium will bring diverse scholars and practitioners to work together in action-oriented sessions that address the complex ecological and socio-economic dynamics of feeding a growing world.
YFSS 2016 Co-Chairs:
Andrew Beck, MEM ’18, MBA ‘18
Rebecca Gildiner, MEM ‘17
Brianna Lloyd, MDiv ‘17
Daniel Moccia-Field, MEM ‘18
Britain Richardson, MEM ‘17
Sarah Sax, MEM ‘17
Abigail Smith, MEM ‘18
Hannah Walchak, MEM ‘17
Introduction by Alark Saxena, Associate Research Scientist, Lecturer and Program Director, Yale Himalaya Initiative
Agriculture is key to attaining the UN Sustainable Goals of eradicating hunger and securing food for an increasing world population. Agriculture also sustains the direct livelihoods of 2.5 billion smallholder farmers who manage an estimated 500 million small farms around the world. These smallholder farmers produce an estimated 80% of the food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Current agricultural intensification practices are the biggest threat to sustainability and a major force behind breaching multiple planetary boundaries. Agriculture contributes to between 19 and 29% of total GHG emissions, uses of 69% of freshwater resources, and 34% of the terrestrial, ice-free surface of the planet accounting for 31% of wild biodiversity loss. It is the primary driver for the substantial breach of the planetary boundary for phosphorous and nitrogen. The foods we produce from these systems struggle to nourish a growing global population where nearly 2 billion suffer from nutrient deficiencies, and nearly 2 billion people are overweight or obese.
In as much as agricultural practices are important parts of the problem, they are likely to be our best bet for novel solutions addressing both human and environmental health.
Using case studies from around the world, Ann Tutwiler will show how agricultural biodiversity can nourish people and sustain the planet. She will give evidence of how the increased and improved use of agricultural biodiversity has the capacity to provide both food and nutritional security, and at the same time provide the core ecosystem services that underpin sustainable agricultural intensification, such as pollination and pest control.
