Transformative Food Policy Dialogues, Thursday 27 February, 12.30-2pm, Huize Heyendaal Salon
A staff-student dialogue on making campus food future-proof
Date & Time: Feb 27 , 12.30-14.00
Location: Huize Heyendaal Salon
Who: Staff and students from the Food Interest Group and other campus stakeholders
Radboud is releasing a new multi-year policy for sustainable food on campus. A campus food policy may describe a strong direction of what to eat, but can miss crucial questions about how food is produced. In this dialogue, we will discuss considerations for transformative and just food policy.
At this Radboud Center for Sustainability Challenges dialogue, staff and student members of the Food Interest Group will discuss their recent manifesto on sustainable food. The discussion will focus on six known problems from food system research (human exploitation, corporate food consolidation, toxic environments, local food, cultural foodways, and animal ethics) that complicate the ideal of a “sustainable diet”. Moreover, a dietary proscription that claims to be sustainable must also attend to:
(1) The labor conditions of the workers involved in production;
(2) How to free production and consumption from corporate control;
(3) The use of chemicals and synthetic fertilizers involved in production;
(4) The empowerment of localized food producers and other change agents;
(5) The importance of respecting or shifting cultural food consumption and production habits;
(6) More-than-human agency.
Read the FIG’s piece:
Towards a transformative campus food policy
We are happy to publish a critical essay on the state of campus food from the Food Systems Interest Group (The FIG). As the RCSC is driving an argument that suggests the pathway to meaningful sustainability is to politicize it’s core positions, the FIG offers a guide for how we can accomplish such critical reflection with campus food.
Following a discussion on the Real Sustainability Challenges Manifesto, we will open up to a moderated community dialogue on how Radboud must shape its current and future approach to sustainable food. Exploring these thorny dimensions points to ways the university could motivate a transformative food system through its food policy and thus fulfil its ambitious sustainability agenda. Radboud should actively draw from the strength of the bioregion and its (non)human actors in transforming the food system.
Together with reflections from the manifesto, this dialogue will explore how Radboud University can establish a food policy council where students, staff and nature have a place for democratic dialogue on the shape of the food environment, beginning now!
We welcome any and all input from the university community at this interactive event, and look forwards to seeing you there.