As issues surrounding food production and sovereignty become an active part of the national public dialogue, the University is bringing the conversation directly to campus this weekend.
Starting this Friday, the University will host Food Justice, a free four-day conference that aims to provide discussion, investigation, insight and educational opportunities surrounding the ethics of food growth, production, research and culture.
The conference, which runs from Feb. 19 to Feb. 21, will have more than 60 speakers, as well as staged readings, a hands-on food fair, an art show, a graduate student symposium, an open house at the University’s Urban Farm and roundtable discussions about topics including sustainable agriculture, food activism, tribal fisheries and farm advocacy.
Featured big-name speakers at the event will include Frederick L. Kirschenmann, who helped found Farm Verified Organic, Inc., and the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, and author-activist Vandana Shiva, who serves as founding director of Navdanya, a community of “seed keepers” and organic farmers seeking to promote food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture.
Conference coordinator Lindsay Naylor said public response to the event has been so huge that the University has already given away all available tickets for Shiva’s closing speech. Shiva’s speech will be simulcast to the EMU Fir Room and 117 Lawrence, as well as broadcast online for those who do not have tickets. The conference will also have live Twitter, Facebook and website updates during the event. Naylor, a geography doctoral student, said the conference’s goal was to include more than the campus community to broaden the message and impact of the event.
“We’re trying to put together a more holistic program that doesn’t just sort of navel gaze,” Naylor said.
One conference organizer, Geraldine Moreno, a University anthropology professor emerita who has researched food for more than 30 years, said she hopes the conference would give participants the chance to build relationships as they work to rebuild the community’s food system.
“There’s opportunities for us to meet and dialogue with people that we’ve not been able to have that conversation with, and to learn from one another and to share things that we are all unaware of,” Moreno said.
Naylor agreed, saying collaboration between different groups at the conference will have the greatest impact.
“If we get people to think a little bit more about what food justice means, what security and sustainability and equity through the lens of agriculture, through the lens of food — if we get people to think about that a little bit differently — then that’s not such a small impact, that’s a pretty big one,” Naylor said.
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