UVM Food Summit: The Right to Food: Power, policy, & politics in the 21st century – June 16-17

Courtesy of  University of Vermont Food Systems Initiative:

The Right to Food: Power, Policy, and Politics in the 21st Century | June 16-17, 2015 | Burlington, VT

University of Vermont and Vermont Law School present
4th annual UVM Food Systems Summit

All people deserve access to adequate, nutritious food. The complicated and provocative question for the fourth annual UVM Food Systems Summit on June 16-17 is how to provide this basic human right.

Globally and in Vermont, the stakes are profound. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, one in nine people worldwide are chronically hungry. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 13 percent of Vermont households are food insecure.  The challenge of “feeding the world” is complicated by income inequality, environmental constraints, technological limitations, climate change and a growing world population. This multi-dimensional challenge calls for interdisciplinary responses. Read more

Keynote Speakers

Raj Patel

writer, activist, and academic

Research Professor, Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin
Senior Research Associate, Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa

Claire Kremen

ecologist, conservation biologist, and academic

Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley
Co-director, Center for Diversified Farming Systems and the Berkeley Food Institute at the University of California

Smita Narula

human rights advocate, attorney, and academic

Fellow in Human Rights and Public Policy at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College

Transdisciplinary panels

The Summit will also feature panels with scholars and practitioners from around the globe:

Behavioral and Cultural Considerations Panel

  • Ashley Chaifetz, University of North Carolina: Food Safety Education and Disparities in North Carolina Emergency Food
  • Paul Feenan, Vermont Youth Conservation Corps: The Vermont Youth Conservation Corps’ Health Care Share: An Immunization for the Future
  • Brittany Kesselman, University of KwaZulu Natal: Cultivating the right to food? The contribution of urban community food gardens to food sovereignty in Johannesburg, South Africa

Biophysical Constraints Panel

  • Ellen Kahler, Vermont Farm to Plate: New England’’s Food Vision: 50% by 2060: –Biophysical Opportunities & Constraints
  • Anastasia Telesetsky, University of Idaho College of Law: Does the Human Right to Food include an Implicit Right to a Healthy Environment?
  • Raffaele Vignola, CATIE: Ecosystem-based adaptation practices and cross-scale governance barriers and opportunities to promote rights to sustainable production of basic grains and coffee for smallholders in tropical America in the context of climate-variability stresses

Geopolitical Context Panel

  • Anne Bellows, Syracuse University: Gender, Nutrition, and the Human Right to Adequate Food: Toward an Inclusive Framework
  • Nadia Lambek, Cavalluzzo Shilton McIntyre Cornish: Realizing the Right to Food: Progress, Limitations and Emerging Alternative Policy and Legal Models
  • Marcela Pino, Food4Farmers: Basic Grain Storage and Distribution Center as a Food Security and Food Sovereignty Strategy for Coffee-Growing Communities in Nicaragua

View the full schedule

The 2015 UVM Food Systems Summit is presented by the University of Vermontin collaboration with Vermont Law School. The Summit is supported in part by funding from the William H. and Anne S. Macmillan Endowment and the Aiken Lecture Series.

For questions about accessibility or to request accommodations please contact Alison Nihart by email at alison.nihart@uvm.edu or phone at 802-656-3831. One week’s advance notice will allow us to provide seamless access.