Food, thriving people and paradigm shifts in the 21st century: goodbye Homo sapiens, hello… ?
Food is a key lens through which to see the world and what is happening. In this talk, Geoff Tansey will reflect on the challenges facing us in creating food systems globally that are fair, healthy and sustainable in the face of growing inequality, transformative technologies and possible paradigm shifts.
Geoff Tansey is an independent writer who curates the online Food Systems Academy. He chaired the independent Fabian Commission on Food and Poverty and is a member of The Food Ethics Council. His books include The Food System: a guide (with Tony Worsley) and co-editorship of The future control of food - A guide to international negotiations and rules on intellectual property, biodiversity and food security. He has degrees in soil science and history and social studies of science. In the mid-1970s, he helped found and edit the journal Food Policy, has worked as a consultant with a range of organisations including DFID, FAO, ISNAR, Quaker UN Office Geneva, and UNCTAD, and on various agricultural development projects in Turkey, Mongolia, Albania and Kazakstan. He was honorary visiting professor of food policy at Leeds Metropolitan University from 1996-99, an honorary research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University until 2015 and is honorary visiting fellow at the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University and Honorary Teaching Fellow, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. In June 2005, he received one of six Joseph Rowntree ‘Visionaries for a Just and Peaceful World’ Awards and, in 2008, he won the Derek Cooper Award for best food campaigner/educator, at the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards. In 2009, The Future Control of Food won the Guild of Food Writers Derek Cooper Award.
For more information on the event, please get in touch with Dr Pietro Iannetta, Ecological Sciences group, Invergowrie.