Organics as a response to the urgent need for resilient food systems
Call for abstracts is open
Mette Vaarst – Aarhus University
Mette Vaarst was educated in veterinary science in 1990 and defended her PhD degree in veterinary epidemiology and clinical medicine in 1995, based on a thesis about health and disease handling in Danish organic dairy herds. She has a master’s degree in health anthropology after 6 years of half-time study in anthropology and philosophy. Her research has mostly been within cross fields between animals - especially dairy cattle - and humans. Mette has been focusing a lot on different actors' choices, motivations, actions and interactions, daily practices and communication around animals - especially vets and other farm-related actors. Most of her research has focused on organic and agroecological animal husbandry in their different social and environmental contexts, in Denmark, Europe and East Africa.
Johan Ekroos – University of Helsinki
Johan’s background is in landscape ecology, with a focus on understanding determinants of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, including agricultural land-use and landscape structure. During the last ten years he has increasingly engaged in interdisciplinary environmental research, collaborating with researchers in agronomy, physical geography, political science, social environmental science, agricultural economics, economic history, agricultural economy, human geography and sustainability sciences. Organic farming has been a research focus already starting from his master’s thesis in 2005. Organics provide an interesting case to approach agroecological research questions more broadly, including production and the entire food system.
About the conference
Resilience refers to a system’s capacity to withstand or adjust to changes imposed by the surrounding environment. In a world challenged by crises such as war, pandemics, climate change, biodiversity loss, finite nature resources, economic and political fluctuations, demographic shifts and rapidly changing market trends, building resilient food systems has never been more urgent. These external pressures affect the entire food system through all the stages of food production and consumption.
Practical information
Programme
Organisers
The conference is organised by SLU Centre for Organic Food and Farming in Sweden, International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems (ICROFS) in Denmark, Norwegian Centre for Organic Agriculture (NORSØK) in Norway, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) and Finnish Organic Research Institute (FORI) in Finland, Research Centre of Organic Farming of Estonian University of Life Sciences, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Economics in Latvia, LCSS – Institute of Economics and Rural Development in Lithuania and NJF, Nordic Association of Agricultural Science. The conference is partially funded by The Nordic Joint Committee for Agricultural and Food Research (NKJ).