The Global Food System and Sustainable Development: Going Against the Grain?

For the past decade, LEAD has offered a unique, 18-month international training programme in leadership for sustainable development. The programme focuses on: enhancing leadership skills; building knowledge of sustainable development challenges and exploring possible solutions; developing a set of shared ethics and values; supporting collaboration and peer learning. Graduates of the programme become LEAD Fellows and join one of the world’s most diverse networks of professionals. There are approximately 1400 LEAD Fellows in more than 80 countries working in a variety of disciplines in academia, business, government, media and NGOs.

The LEAD Europe Regional Sessions provide a unique opportunity for LEAD Associates to meet and work with a number of distinguished national and international speakers. These speakers deliver their message using an interactive approach to encourage questioning and debate. LEAD International staff also participate and help to facilitate the working groups and provide invaluable information and experience to Associates on the case studies. Each regional session spans five days and will include presentations, site visits, stakeholder meetings, skills modules and reporting. The 2005 LEAD Europe Regional Session will provide a forum for the exploration of issues of global and national importance pertaining to food security and sustainability.

Objectives

• To explore multiple dimensions of future food security challenges, from local to global, with a particular emphasis on how they are inter-related.
• To study the complexity of sustainable food systems and explore the challenges to, and opportunities for, sustainable and equitable production and distribution of food resources with case studies of food production, processing, and distribution activities in the UK.
• To strengthen Associates’ capabilities in systems thinking, and effective analytical and presentation skills through a final reporting process on the session theme.
• To provide an opportunity to network with peers from all parts of Europe in order to strengthen the links among them.

Context

The objective of the first LEAD Europe Regional Session for Cohort 11 is to explore the challenges of global and local food sustainability and security. Close to 800 million people do not have enough to eat, yet the world produces more food per inhabitant than ever before. This contradiction demands an analysis of the policies and practices that disrupt the path that should exist between food production and adequate nutrition.

Food insecurity and unsustainability is the result of a range of complex factors. This session aims to provide an overview of these factors and potential solutions, identifying key areas of controversy in the food security debate while balancing North/South issues and perspectives. This session is being held in the UK because its agriculture and land use are challenged at present by factors which will come to affect all countries in the near future – a decline in rural populations and economy, changing food and trade policies, concerns about disease, safety and new technologies, and debate about the food chain and the role of business. Further, the UK and Europe occupy an important position with respect to North/South dialogue on trade in food and developmental policy. Key issues and potential case studies in the UK will be identified, paying special attention to the relationship between farming, food and the environment—an area in which LEAD is concentrating its efforts.

Structure

LEAD Europe Regional Session at Wye will last 5 days and will have several distinctive elements.

The first two days will center on the main theme of “Sustainable Agriculture within the Global Food Economy�? and related issues. The topic will be introduced from a global perspective, making use of prominent national and international speakers on food issues. Associates will examine different perspectives on agricultural sustainability and food security, including those of international agencies, national and local governments, NGOs, and civil society in both the North and South.

Several key areas will be explored in a series of panel discussions. The following four themes will be addressed in a panel discussion:

1. The Myth of Scarcity: Increased Production and Food Security
   This panelist will examine issues around food production, access to food, and food security and insecurity. These issues arise from comparison of changes in food production and food insecurity over the last 40 years, and from consideration of possible scenarios regarding population growth and food production.
2. Genetically Modified Foods and Food Security
   Genetic engineering in agriculture is being promoted as the panacea to food insecurity in the South, amidst much public debate here in the UK as well as internationally. This panelist will discuss the role and contribution of biotechnology not only in alleviating food insecurity, but also in the areas of enhancing food quality and food safety.
3. Growing the Market: Trade Liberalisation and Agricultural Subsidies
   The panelist will explore debates relating to the potential for trade liberalisation to reduce the current impacts of northern countries’ agricultural and trade policies both on their own societies and on developing countries.
4. Modern Supply Chains: Threats and Opportunities to North & South, Producers & Consumers
   This panelist is concerned with the battle for supremacy in a food industry in which competition is played on a global field, with fewer, larger, global players battling for market share.

In order to strengthen the experiential component of the learning process, Associates will visit a number of organisations engaged in different food production, importation, and distribution activities in the UK. The focus will be to gain exposure to several elements of the food chain. These site visits will provide concrete cases for consideration of issues raised in plenary sessions and panel discussions. Working groups will report on these issues in group presentations at the end of the session.

Following these site visits, Associates will be engaged in Leadership skill training. This will include a skills module that will focus on systems thinking for sustainable development.