Yale Food Symposium-Yale University, October 18-19, 2013

Thanks to Melissa Mortazavi, Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School for passing along the information below.


Yale Food Systems Symposium
Yale University, October 18-19, 2013

The parallel forces of urbanization and globalization are transforming our planet. They are bringing unprecedented changes to food production and distribution, livelihoods, communities, and the environment. While the pace of this transformation presents significant challenges to the creation of just and sustainable food systems, it may also create powerful opportunities: to support ecological stewardship, promote economic sustainability, cultivate human health, and ensure social justice. Currently, divergent food system paradigms compete for validity. How can these diverse perspectives be negotiated? How can we synchronize the efforts of research, policy, and practice?
The Yale Food Systems Symposium will bring emerging and established scholars and practitioners to work together in action-oriented sessions that address the complex ecological and socio-economic processes of food production, consumption, climate change and rapid urbanization. A variety of session formats will encourage transdisciplinary dialogue and an active exchange of ideas. We seek a diversity of proposal formats: panels, working groups, roundtables, poster presentations, and papers. We welcome perspectives from the natural and social sciences, from applied disciplines, and from community practitioners. Proposals that bring scholars and practitioners together, work across disciplines, or partner emerging and established researchers are especially encouraged.

Topic areas include, but are not limited to:

Climate change and the food system
Urbanization, land use change, and food systems planning
Politics, policies, and governance across scales
Agricultural biodiversity and issues of genetic property
Sustainable intensification, multi-functional agriculture
Urban-rural linkages
Public and market-based approaches to regulating the food system
Alternative food networks
The right to food, food justice, and food sovereignty movements
Industrial ecology approaches to food systems analysis
Sustainable diets and assessing and forecasting nutrition trends
Sustainable supply chains
University-community partnerships
Research methods, participatory practice, and frameworks for collaboration

Submission form and deadlines:

Deadline for submission is July 1, 2013. Abstracts & workshop proposals should be 150-200 words and include a title and keywords. Please submit online using our abstract submission form. Accepted proposals will be notified by August 15, 2013.

Questions about proposal submission and registration may be directed to yalefoodsymposium@gmail.com.

Maine Law Review Food System Conference: Articles Available

Announcement from the Maine Law Review (edited for this post):

On February 23, 2013, the Maine Law Review organized a day-long conference in Portland, Maine devoted to discussing emerging issues in food law and policy.  This conference, Colloquium:  Local Food, Global Food:  Do We Have What It Takes to Reinvent the U.S. Food System? brought together more than a dozen legal scholars from around the country, including some from our Food Law Professors network. The audience was comprised of members of the legal community, policymakers, farmers, and community organizers.  The conference became a forum for exploring the many ways in which people are challenging conventional thinking about U.S. food systems, and the hurdles they face in so doing.

To continue to facilitate the exchange of ideas about these important and relevant issues, the Maine Law Review has devoted much of Volume 65:2 to legal scholarship on food law and policy. The spring volume, which includes sixteen essays on a diverse range of food law and policy topics, is now published and available online on the Maine Law Review website.

 To purchase a paper copy, please e-mail mlreditor@maine.edu.

Maine Law Review
University of Maine School of Law
246 Deering Avenue
Portland, ME 04102