On January 16, 2018, the Food & Business Knowledge Platform and MVO Nederland organize a second meeting of the Innovation Network Feeding Cities, entitled “Increasing investments of the Dutch Agri-food sector in emerging economies”.

Dutch agro-food companies play a significant role in the increasing worldwide demand for (fresh) food produce. To feed growing cities in a sustainable way, they need to collaborate and form coalitions, share knowledge, initiate innovative and scalable projects and position themselves better. These were some of the conclusions of the Round Table event “Feeding Cities”, held in the Demokwekerij Westland on April 18, 2017. Read more about the meeting conclusions here.

At the meeting participants embraced the idea of an “Innovation Network Feeding Cities” and expressed the wish to come to concrete action. So for this second meeting concrete opportunities and ways forward are central: matchmaking and networking for early movers, insights on innovative new (pilot) projects, and ways to enhance policy support for these initiatives and the identification of opportunities in developing countries and emerging economies.

Programme

The Food & Business Knowledge Platform (F&BKP) and MVO Nederland, together with other parties, will bring together businesses, experts and policymakers to increase collective action on this theme. Three concrete topics are central:

1. The experience of ambitious small and large scale initiatives and the innovative ideas that they brought forth;
2. Match-making: linking with running projects and initiatives with hands-on experience;
3. What can be done so that policy support enables such initiatives.

Inspirational cases of companies or projects will be presented, followed by a dialogue in multiple subgroups on the three topics. After a plenary session with special attention to concrete follow-up, there will be the opportunity to network during drinks.

The outcomes of this meeting will be used to further define the scope of the Innovation Network Feeding Cities and it will also feed into the workshop “Private sector coalitions to feed African cities“ that will be organized during the foodFIRST conference 2018.

Please download the draft programme.

Registration

Please note that there are a limited number of places available for the meeting. Early registration is strongly advised, since places are available on a “first-come, first-served” basis.

You can register by sending an email () before January 12, 2017, at 12:00.