Food & Business Knowledge Platform

Course: 'Plant genetic resources and seeds'
2014-10-27 - 2014-11-14
Loss of genetic resources has resulted in major concerns about future food and nutrition security. The vulnerability of agricultural systems towards pests, diseases and climate change makes the topic urgent, and has led to the development of a range of conservation strategies. Community Biodiversity Management (CBM) distinguishes itself from other conservation strategies by enhancing social interdependence, collaboration, adaptability and autonomy.
Community resilience in the face of change
On-farm management of diversity for empowerment
CBM focuses on the process of enabling communities to secure their access to and control over genetic resources through increased decision-making power. Strengthening the management over a variety of resources, provides options that farmers can utilize in times of scarcity. Improving their access to, and control over these resources, simultaneously contributes to the development of farmers’ autonomy and their capacity to respond to change.
The training is experience-based and task-oriented. It includes fieldwork in the Jeypore district, in one of the world’s most important agricultural heritage systems.
The overall objective of the program is to enhance your capability to apply state-of-the-art strategies for managing Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA).
Course objectives
Upon completion of the course you will:

be familiar with contemporary approaches towards genetic resources management and conservation strategies;
know the conceptual framework of CBM, its components and practices;
understand integrated seed systems;
know how to manage PGRFA in dynamic landscapes, unpredictable environments, climate hotspots and vulnerabilities;
know how to empower communities and enhance their resilience;
understand participatory learning and action research;
be familiar with key PGRFA policies such as CBD, IT-PGRFA, IPR, WTO-TRIPS and UPOV.

Target audience
The training is designed for public, civil, research, education and/or development professionals working in a range of relevant projects. Applicants should have at least a BSc degree, have three years of professional experience in a relevant field, and be fluent in the English language.

Course: 'Promoting entrepreneurship and agribusiness development'
2014-11-03 - 2014-11-14
Over 140 million entrepreneurs expect to add at least five new jobs over the next five years. Entrepreneurial activity is flourishing across the globe, and can act as an economic engine. Entrepreneurship is the best hope for reviving a weakened world economy. But entrepreneurs cannot do it alone. They need an enabling environment in which their business can grow. This 14 days course will give insight in the basic requirements on a national level for increasing the level of entrepreneurship.
Enhancing a fertile business climate
Avoiding the pitfalls
It is estimated that 70 to 80 per cent of new businesses end their operations in their first year. And of those that survive, only half will remain in business after five years. However, many of the hurdles and pitfalls a new entrepreneur faces can be avoided.
In this dynamic training programme, you will learn how to address these challenges. It focuses on the things entrepreneurs care most about, and that ultimately affect their bottom line: how to raise money, make money, save money and help others to do so.
Learn from success and mistakes of others
Successful entrepreneurs will be invited to share their experiences, and give you tips on what you need to avoid mistakes they made, and what secrets underlie their accomplishments. Key government officials will explain what the challenges are in creating an environment in which entrepreneurs can flourish. You will meet actors from various agribusiness clusters, including representatives of financial institutes, business service providers and change facilitators. You will learn from the hands-on experience of the actors, and also enlarge the network that will help you build your own business.
Learn to ask the right questions
The training will be built on the entrepreneurial life cycle, based on the background of the participants. Experienced entrepreneurs are faced with different questions than the ones who are in the phase of starting a business. Learning to ask the right questions is key in every phase, both for business owners and supporting organisations.
Target audience
This course is aimed at business owners and representatives from organisations that support entrepreneurship and/or seek to enable an environment in which businesses can flourish.

Course: 'Linking emergency aid to food and nutrition security'
2014-11-03 - 2014-11-14
Emergency/food aid is often criticized as a donor driven response, creating dependency in the short term, and undermining incentives for local agricultural development in the longer term. Usually, little is done to encourage people to build a better life and prevent them from falling back into situations where they need assistance again.
Avoiding the pitfalls of help-induced dependency
Closing the gap between emergency aid and development
In this course we will explore how to bridge the gap between emergency assistance and developmental food and livelihood security support. Building resilience of livelihoods, necessary to make the position of households robust. Responses to emergency situations have to be seen and used as an initial step towards sustainable development.
In this interactive course, participants learn to make use of theoretical and conceptual thinking on food security. We will work with practical examples of policies and programs of the critical path of transition from aid to food security.
Course objectives
Upon completion of the course you will:

have insight in the typology of emergencies – and the responses that contribute to food security;
be better aware of causes of food insecurity outside the direct context of the household (on regional, national or even global levels);
have clear ideas for lobby and advocacy for policies to facilitate a more developmental approach to emergencies;
be able to apply tools for developing programs or interventions to contribute to structural development.

Target audience

Mid-career officials working for a governmental and non-governmental organisation in one of the following positions:
you are a policy or planning officer at national or sub-national level with responsibility for emergency situations;
you have a managing or co-ordinating position in planning, management and/or implementation of a community food security and nutrition programme or rural development programme;
you are a representative of civil society involved of structural development in emergency areas.

Vijverbergsession: 'Role of cooperations in improving market access in Africa' (in Dutch)
2014-11-05 06:30 - 19:30 (UTC+1) | Rabobank Vijverberg, Korte Vijverberg 2, Den Haag, 2513 AB, Netherlands
Deze sessie ‘Role of cooperations in improving market access in Africa’ is voorbereidend op de FoodFirst Family Farming Conferentie die op 15 december 2014 gehouden wordt in het Auditorium van de Rabobank in Utrecht. Kernvraag op deze conferentie is: wat kan gedaan worden om het ontwikkelingsproces van Afrikaanse boeren tot ondernemers te faciliteren en te ondersteunen?
Door de schommelende markt loopt het boerengezinsbedrijf veel risico. Daarbij komt dat het boerengezinsbedrijf slecht verzekerd is. Door de lage vraag naar verzekeringen, wegen de kosten van het opzetten van een coöperatie niet op tegen de baten. Nu geldt dat prijsschommelingen een groot risico vormen voor de boer, net zoals weersveranderingen. Risicomanagement zou een integraal onderdeel bij het ontwikkelen van de landbouwsector moeten zijn.
Thema
Met name dáárover ging de Vijverbergsessie van 10 september 2014. Eén van de barrières voor doorontwikkeling van het lokale boerenbedrijf is onvoldoende toegang tot financiële diensten, maar ook het gebrek aan toegang tot de afzetmarkt. De Vijverbergsessie van 5 november richt zich op deze schakel in de keten; toegang tot afzetmarkten.
Kleine boeren verenigen zich in coöperaties om de markt te bedwingen. Ze delen informatie over landbouwpraktijken en marktprijzen. Wat zijn de ervaringen met lokale landbouworganisaties en coöperaties die samenwerking tussen de boeren bevorderen op gebied van productie en verkoop met als doel de aangesloten boeren bedrijfjes winstgevend te maken? En wat zijn de ervaringen en lessons learned met programma’s die kleine boeren ondersteunen bij het organiseren van gemeenschappelijke vermarkting, of bij het opzetten van eigen organisaties voor verwerking en vermarkting (vereniging, coöperatie e.d.)?
Sprekers
Deze sessie wordt voorgezeten door Ewald Wermuth.
Ton Dietz van het Africa Studiecentrum (ASC) zal een inleiding verzorgen over het effect van interventies bij coöperaties die kleine boeren ondersteunen bij het op de markt brengen van hun producten.
Dirk Duijzer, Directeur Coöperatie & Besturing van de Rabobank zal een presentatie verzorgen over de rol van coöperaties.
Annemarie Groot Kormelinck van het Centre for Development Innovation van de WUR zal spreken over ervaringen en geleerde lessen met lokale programma’s die kleine boeren ondersteunen bij het organiseren van gemeenschappelijke vermarkting.
Programma
16.30 Ontvangst
17.00 Opening
19.00 Drankjes en lichte snacks

Seminar on the interdisciplinary approach to food security
2014-11-05 16:00 - 17:30 | The University of Warwick Brussels Office 6th floor, Avenue d'Auderghem 22-28, Brussels, 1040, Belgium
On Wednesday November 5 at 16.00 a seminar on the interdisciplinary approach to food security is held. The event will be followed by a cocktail reception and will be hosted at the University of Warwick Brussels Office.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Food Security Policy
To address the complex issue of ‘food security’, researchers at the University of Warwick bring together issues of food production and supply, environmental and social sustainability, governance (including science and technology), complexity and tools for decision making, social justice, nutrition and public health. This interdisciplinary approach draws on crop production, cell biology, public health, political science, social policy, mathematics and statistics, history, philosophy and the performing arts.
The session
In this short session we will talk about systematic approaches we are taking to consider and inform any policy related to food security, working in different disciplines and at different scales.
Any policy to address ‘food security’ needs to network together expert evidence coming from many different and disparate areas, which nevertheless interlock and interact.
At the University of Warwick we are working with particular policy actors on specific case studies to understand under what conditions different kinds of evidence from all of these disparate areas can be coherently combined, as if by a single logical decision-maker, and how such a network can be used to compare the effects of different policies on each of the areas food security affects (health, education, social cohesion, etc.).
It is also important to understand when new evidence can be incorporated in a coherent way and how uncertainties in the evidence can be retained so as to give a measure of uncertainty in the solution. We will describe some of the case studies we have undertaken and discuss future research.
Agenda
16.00 Registration
16.10 Welcome and Introduction – Mr Geoff Moede Moderator
16.15 Professor Jim Smith (University of Warwick) will talk on building a decision support system for food security. We will discuss how decision support systems can help inform policy choices and provide narratives for the eventual decision. These build on experiences of successful development of support systems for the nuclear industry. We outline various challenges for developing analogous designed to support policy design to ameliorate the impact of various food crises on food poverty within the UK. We then proceed to describe tentatively how these systems might be scaled up to help inform and try to address the analogous challenges faced by European policymakers.
16.35 Dr Martin J. Barons (University of Warwick) will talk on her work with local government and provide an example of the impact on UK food poverty of a single foodstuff (sugar). We will describe recent developments associated with UK food policy decision support. We will describe some aspects of working with domain experts and demonstrate the types of processes used to elicit a structure which will be helpful to policymakers in drawing together information and forming a consensus.
16.55 Discussion debate moderaded by Mr Geoff Moede will include:
Dr Albino Maggio – European Commission – DG Joint Research Centre – Foresight and Behavioural Insight
Dr Patrik Kolar – European Commission – DG Research and Innovation – Head of Unit of Agri-Food Chain Unit
Mr Zoran Kovac – Programme coordinator at the Consumers, Health and Food Executive Agency (CHAFEA) – TBC
Dr Rosemary Collier – Director of Warwick Crop Centre and an Academic Lead for the Warwick Global Research Priority (GRP) on Food
Professor Elizabeth Dowler – Food & Social Policy in the Sociology Department, The University of Warwick
For registrations please click here.
