Independiente Diálogo
Enfoque geográfico:
Italia, Suiza
Major focus
The narrative that has emerged in the last years shows a massive reduction in biodiversity, a de-link to seasonality of consumption, more food sophistication, and a reduction in the time we devote to prepare food to adjust to our increasingly busy and quick lifestyles. Food used to be the main element of societal and family gatherings, and has slowly become more a matter of feeding and keeping us fit. This trend is also the result of globalization of trade that came about with colonization and reduction of the costs of production, opening the path to shifting from primary sector based economie
... Leer máss to cheap labour based industrialization. After the Second World War and up until the 1990s, this trend was further accelerated by the massive use of marketing strategies, the fast urbanization of the population, the reduced average size of family units, the growth of pre-cooked food with the de-linking between rural and urban areas, all intertwined with rapid economic and tertiary sector growth. In this context, big data was already starting to influence and enforce specific narratives. Did this narrative work? Yes - but fundamental elements such as equity and sustainability were missing in the equation. The narrative started to change in the 1990s focusing on a technocratic language, slowly starting to shift the focus towards sustainability (ESG in financial terms), as well as to an increased rights-based approach to food while feeding a fast growing and urbanized population.What about the narrative of the future? Our first two BoT worshops showed us that the future of food is an indicator of the new macro-narrative which tells us that time has come to embrace diversity, bring about a culture of empowerment, assure that in anything we do we are considering the true cost of what we are doing, and this implies that we need to rethink our habitats.
Why? Because we feel the requirement to do it and more importantly, we also can. We have all we need to do this. We have better knowledge of the true costs and the trade-offs; we are going towards personalized diets determined by health considerations; we know that inequalities exist and increasingly define social determinants of health related to food consumption; and that food marketing can be better tailored to drivers of sustainable modernization of food-related processes.The major focus of the Dialogue was to discuss the future of production, transformation and distribution
systems keeping the evolution of consumption patterns as an entry point.
Participants were helped to project themselves into this subject by two showcases, namely a Swiss valley that reorganized its social fabric and structure with local organic farming and processing and the experience of a zero waste catering based on a defined traditional contest.The discussion was focused around four main questions/discussion topics:a) How can we link the need to rethink our urbanized habitats to evolving production systems? Will be proximity and diversification of production a way to unite consumers and producers?b) Speaking about true costs, is food waste prevention and reduction a way to create awareness and commitment by both citizens and authorities?c) In the evolution towards sustainable urban life habits, how will key components of civism like empowerment and rights based approaches be affected by traditions and innovations in the food chains?d) Will reduction of inequalities in terms of food consumption depend on a total reshuffle of the transformation and distribution chains? Leer menos
Línea(s) de Acción: 1, 2, 3, 4
Palabras clave: Data & Evidence, Environment and Climate, Governance, Human rights, Innovation, Policy, Trade-offs, Women & Youth Empowerment