Alnarp, Sweden
The conference is planned over three days, including a field excursion to visit an agroecological farm in the Scania region of Sweden.
Organised by: SLU, OECD CRP, GCUA 2030, and FoodAct Formas project
The conference will have three key specific goals:
1) To facilitate integration of national and local knowledge bases on agroecology into a comparative framework for the analysis of agroecology and the transfer of agroecological knowledge across geographies
2) To coordinate future efforts for enhancing comparative research on agroecology across OECD countries
3) To build a common platform that can foster knowledge sharing and evidence for agroecology centred policy making at national and international levels.
Attendees: Invited natural and social scientist researchers from across OECD country universities, and other guests (governmental and organisation representatives; European Association for Agroecology).
SLU researchers interested to attend, please contact the organisers. See below.
Aims: In line with the ongoing global discussion on the role of agroecology in sustainability transitions, the proposed conference will bring together researchers from OECD countries to discuss and define what a 'comparative agroecology' approach is, or could be. Hence exploring and defining ‘comparative agroecology’ as a paradigm to upscale and catalyse food and water system transformations across geographies, and bringing together a key knowledge base on this approach, are the main goals of the conference.
Researcher’s input: The researcher will be tasked to contribute a brief 10 minute presentation at the conference reflecting their national context under the title of ‘State of agriculture and agroecology research and policy – a national perspective’.
Output from the conference: Conference proceedings will be published, potentially in several forms, including the possibility of a synthesis in a peer-reviewed journal.
The event should be referred as an “Event sponsored by the OECD’s Co-operative Research Programme: Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems.
First day
Morning sessions (8:30-12:00 hrs)
1) Opening of the conference with a background presentation by the convenors
2) CRP Theme co-ordinator attending the event to give a brief presentation about the CRP
3) Welcoming words by authorities from SLU and also policy makers to be invited to the conference
4) Country based presentation under the topic: state of agriculture and agroecology research in each country
Afternoon sessions (13:00-17:00 hrs)
1) Country based presentations under the topic: country-based assessments of agriculture and agroecology to address water and food transformations in the context of climate policy for agriculture
2) Plenary session to discuss comparative dimensions of agroecology
Dinner
Second day (8:30-17:00 hrs)
Third day
Morning sessions (8:30-12:00 hrs)
1) Plenary session to continue discussion and analysis of comparative dimensions of agroecology
2) Systematization of discussions
Afternoon sessions (13:00-17:00 hrs)
3) Wrap up session: what has been learned at the conference and messages to the policy community
4) Conclusions and ways forward
Final dinner
The locality for the conference has been strategically decided to allow train transportation of participants from countries as Sweden, Denmark and Germany in principle. This contributes to reducing emissions from the conference.
Cristian Alarcon Ferrari, SLU Global's network coordinator at the Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences
Paul Egan, Associate Professor/ Researcher
Department of Plant Protection Biology
E-mail: paul.egan@slu.se
Telephone: +46 (0) 40-415162