News
Forum 2020 | Thème, dates et lieux
Transform local food systems through sustainable consumption and production
5th to 7th of October 2020
Ecosite, Crest, Drôme, France & Online
Sustainable consumption and production, carried by actors in rural areas, are levers to mobilize for the transformation of food systems towards sustainability. The globalisation of trade has a profound impact on food systems and raises several environmental and social limits: loss of biodiversity, impoverishment of arable land, water pollution, air pollution by greenhouse gas emissions, malnutrition and food insecurity, accentuation of inequalities, food injustice, desertification of rural areas and rampant urban concentration.
These major trends are challenging the world’s agriculture through difficult changes. These changes can follow various trajectories: incremental or radical, breakthrough or gradual adjustment. In order to explore viable transformation pathways, the world’s agricultures are engaged in initiatives that bring hope and uncertainty. The necessary changes involve the agri-food chain and all the actors that influence, support and govern it. The involvement of all is necessary to change the current logic that, as mere links, farmers are being pushed to standardize practices and solutions. Indeed, globalized markets for unprocessed agricultural products operate on the model of comparative advantage for products for which equivalence is the key. As prices are determined at the marketing level and not upstream at the production level, standards serve as a benchmark for all trade, driving prices down. Agricultural policies have been based on this logic of uniformity of supply practices, causing negative impacts on biological and cultural diversity. In order to move towards sustainability, production and consumption practices must change profoundly, challenging the multiple circuits, statuses, policies and relationships between actors and products at the heart of food systems.