The world food system faces unprecedented challenges in its ability to feed a growing global population. There is an urgent need for viable solutions and the scope of the challenges requires collaborative efforts more than ever.

The World Food System Conference 2015 will highlight solution-focused, interdisciplinary, and system-oriented research and practice addressing how to feed the world while considering human health, the environment, and social well-being.

The aim is to bring together researchers and other food system stakeholders to exchange ideas, methodologies, success stories, and lessons learned. The conference will be kept small (maximum 100 participants) in order to maximize opportunities for meaningful exchange among participants.

Sessions highlighting innovative research both within and at the intersections of four thematic focus areas (Sustainable Production Systems, Food for Health, Resilient Food Markets, and Whole Food System Approaches) will offer a rare but exciting space for professional, empirically-driven dialogue that encourages experts to interact across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.

The conference will incorporate a workshop in which the participants explore how collaborative work on different aspects of the food system can be integrated under a comprehensive framework.

Conference Themes

The conference is organized around the following thematic focus areas and their intersections:

• Sustainable Production Systems (establishing sustainable food production systems that are resilient in the face of increasing perturbations)
• Food for Health (design and processing for safe, accessible, high quality and healthy food and food products)
• Resilient Food Markets (creating and connecting to effective food markets that create value for all stakeholders)
• Whole Food System Approaches (tools, methods, frameworks designed to take a systems approach).