Yale University will be organising the “Yale Food Systems Symposium”, to take place 18-19 October 2013 at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

The symposium addresses the complex ecological and socio-economic processes of food production, consumption, climate change and rapid urbanisation.

The conveners are now calling for abstracts and workshop proposals before 01 July 2013 on these topics:

• Climate change and the food system
• Urbanisation, 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

Please visit the official symposium website for more information.

2nd Global Moringa Meet 2013

The Centre for Jatropha Promotion & Biodiesel (CJP) will be organising the “2nd Global Moringa Meet 2013”, along with a “Two Days Moringa State of Art International Workshop” this coming 21-22 November 2013 in Jaipur, India.

The focus of the events is to share the latest research and developments on Moringa crop production and commercialisation.

You can contact the organizers directly at email hidden; JavaScript is required, or visit the official conference website for more information.

Together with a number of international and Spanish partners, CFF co-organised  the “International Seminar Crops for the XXI Century”, held last December in Cordoba, Spain. The seminar resulted in the Cordoba Declaration, which calls for more diversity in agricultural and food systems, principally through greater use of neglected and underutilised species (NUS). Specifically the declaration proposes action along these lines:

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  Farmers threshing quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), near Puno, Peru.

  Improving education and awareness to ensure that the values of a much wider range of NUS are recognized by all society;

• Increasing recognition and support for small scale and family farmers, women and men, in maintaining diversified and resilient agricultural systems;
• Facilitating the conservation, access, availability, use and exchange of seeds by farmers;
• Promoting formal and informal research and plant breeding to realize the full potential of NUS;
• Improving access to markets and stimulating demand for a wider range of NUS, while ensuring that benefits are shared fairly.

3rd International Conference on Neglected and Underutilised Species

The “3rd International Conference on Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS)” will take place 23-25 September 2013, in Accra, Ghana.

The conference will focus on the use of minor crops to improve the livelihoods and well being of poor farmers in Africa. It will cover such thematic areas as resilience of agricultural and livelihood systems, the upgrading of value chains of NUS, and the facilitation of an enabling environment for NUS development.

Please visit the official conference website for more information. Interested participants are encouraged to sign up for the conference newsletter to receive updates on the development of this conference.

The Horticulture CRSP Trellis Fund

The Horticulture CRSP Trellis Fund provides small-scale, in-country development organisations access to U.S. graduate student expertise, providing benefit to both the student and the in-country institutions.

Organisations in 18 selected developing countries are invited to identify a horticultural problem facing local farmers and the type of expertise they seek in a U.S. graduate student. Interested organisation are requested to submit a project proposal with their intended objectives, activities, gender program and a $2,000 budget

Graduate students from UC Davis, Cornell University, North Carolina State University and University of Hawaii at Manoa are invited to submit applications to participate in this programme. Selected students will travel to meet their partner organisation and, upon return, will support their organisation’s outreach programme via email.

Deadline to both organisations and graduate students applications closes on 04 March 2013. Please visit the official website of the Horticulture CRSP Trellis Fund 2013 for more information or direct your enquiries to email hidden; JavaScript is required.