FeedingCities’ Food TECH webinar – part of its What the Fork? webinar series investigating ‘key movements in the rapidly changing food systems landscape’ – looks at the ‘pre-existing inequalities and fragilities in our food systems’ exposed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and explores how to make our existing food systems more resilient, equitable and sustainable through technology.
The pandemic’s impact on food systems globally, including widespread job losses and food-price hikes, has disproportionately affected those already marginalised thanks to gender, class and/or race. At the same time, people are questioning the role of industrial agriculture systems in creating conditions in which zoonotic diseases can spread. Beyond the pandemic, we face increasingly frequent and serious crises related to climate, biodiversity and obesity.
Still, reasons for optimism abound. ‘There is a growing appetite to transform and reimagine our food systems,’ FeedingCities contends.
And making food systems more resilient, equitable and sustainable through tech is the focus of this sure-to-be-thought-provoking 90-minute webinar.
The Food-TECH session panel
Nicole Thorpe, a founding Director of Cultinova/Experior Micro Technologies and sustainability advocate, leverages ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to help improve the way we produce and consume food, design cities and nurture our health and the environment. Thorpe, a Board member of several industry associations including the vertical farm institute, Vienna; FarmTech Society (Brussels); the Cluster for Sustainable Cities; the UK Urban AgTech collective UKUAT; and Singapore-MIT’s SMART urban agtech initiative, is also the UK lead of CRUNCH, an EU-funded sustainable cities project involving 16 partners from nine countries.
Mateja Kramar, a senior advisor on Sustainability in Agriculture & Food Industries at Microsoft and serial entrepreneur, helps farmers produce more – sustainably – assisted by technology. She does this primarily through the Swiss Smart Farming initiative, a collaboration between Microsoft, Verein Agricultura Regeneratio, Farm21 and more.
Cullen Naumoff, co-founder of Farm Fare, which deploys technology ‘to coordinate existing regional supply chain infrastructure to move product from small and medium farms to wholesale markets’. Farm Fare’s work is focused on supporting food hubs and family farms with region-specific data on supply, demand and soil, enabling them to plan production more strategically, efficiently and collaboratively – critical to unlocking large-volume markets such as hospitals, public schools and processors.
Register for the webinar
To register for this free 90-minute online session, click here.