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Future of Food Dialogues: 2023 Centre for Sustainable Food Systems speaker series

Research Excellence | Strategy 9: Knowledge Exchange
Theme: Collaboration

Since 2020, the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) and the Faculty of Land and Food Systems have presented an annual speaker series, bringing together international speakers and audience members.

2023 Speaker Series: Food at the Tipping Point: Ways Forward from a Food System in Crisis

CSFS presents the third instalment of the Future of Food Dialogue series:

Food at the Tipping Point: Ways Forward from a Food System in Crisis: From past themes of resiliency, to innovation and now to action, this year’s 10-part series focuses on the urgency to act on a food system in crisis. The series will tackle issues brought on by the breakdown of our climate system which is creating dramatic rippling effects across all natural and built systems. With extinction-level losses of biodiversity, more frequent and severe extreme weather events impacting all stages of the food system, rising food insecurity and growing political tensions, a widespread and dramatic change is urgently needed.

The first event in the series was Jan. 26, 2023, Completing the Circle: A Path Towards Nutrient Circularity in Food Systems.

About the webinar: Can we achieve balance in the nutrient cycle? In an ideal world the nutrients in soil, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, flow through the entire food system, growing into plants, which animals and humans eat, and eventually those same nutrients return back to the soil, beginning the cycle once again. But in our food system, we are failing to meet the potential of nutrient circularity, leading to an excess of nutrients in some areas and a deficiency in others, causing problems from pollution to depleted soils and food insecurity. From production to consumption, recovery to waste back to production, the webinar explores how we can bridge the gap between our food and waste systems, and pave the path forward to nutrient circularity.

Presenters:

  • Dr. Graham MacDonald, Associate Professor, Department of Geography at McGill University
  • Mel Sylvestre, Grounded Acres Organic Farm, UBC B.Sc. in Soil and Plant Science
  • Jessica Regan, FoodMesh
  • Morgan Hamilton, Masters student in the UBC SoilRes3 lab at UBC and UBC B.Sc. in Global Resource Systems

Please visit the Future of Food Dialogues series page to see all upcoming 2023 events, and to view past webinars in this series.

Through Strategy 9: Knowledge Exchange, UBC is committed to improving the ecosystem that supports the translation of research into action.