Building an integrated Agriculture and Health Agenda: Issues for International Research and Policy

The speakers are listed below

Building an integrated Agriculture and Health Agenda:Issues for International Research and Policy

Purpose

This conference will bring together international experts in agriculture and health research and policy, to address the question of how best to bring together these sectors to address the challenges of global development.

The results of the conference will inform the development of the new Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH), established at the University of London with a £3.5m grant from the Leverhulme Trust .

Background

In our rapidly changing world, an intuitive, simple and positive relationship between the production of food, its consumption and the generation of human health is proving to be neither intuitive nor simple, nor always positive. Decoupled policies and systems for agriculture and health are not responding adequately to nutrition and health needs of populations. This problem is now receiving deserved focus from government and research bodies in the UK and other wealthy nations, but the greatest consequences of this disconnect are being felt by low and middle income countries. Over a billion people remain undernourished while at the same time a diet transition associated with growing consumption of high energy, low nutrient foods is causing obesity and related diseases in a growing urban population, a “double burden” of food-related disease. Globalization of food systems is affecting the balance of agricultural production and trade, the emergence and spread of disease, and other processes which will have particular impact on livelihoods and health in poorer countries, as will the changes to agriculture and health associated with future climate change.

The challenge of feeding 9 billion people healthily and safely by 2050 will demand evidence-led advances in policy over the coming years. Research on this problem is constrained, North and South, by the longstanding isolation of agricultural and health research communities and institutions. The historical separation of these sectors, their research and policy making, is reflected in university departments, government ministries, multinational business clustering and the UN system. Each sector has been supported by a similar set of research disciplines in natural science, social science and economics, but due to long isolation, these disciplines lack common approaches and tools.

Location

The conference will take place in the Henry Wellcome Auditorium of the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, in Euston, London.

PROGRAMME

Wednesday, 23rd June

09.30– 10.00 Registration

Session 1: Defining the Problems: “Feeding the world healthily in 2050”

10.00 – 10.10 Introduction by Prof Jeff Waage, London International Development Centre

10.10 – 11.10 Keynote addresses by speakers on a panel

• An agricultural perspective – Prof Joachim von Braun (IFPRI)
• A health perspective – Prof Ricardo Uauy (LSHTM)
• A Food systems perspective - Prof Harriet Friedmann (University of Toronto)

11.10 – 11.30 Questions from audience, chaired by Jeff Waage.

11.30 – 12.00  Coffee

Session 2 : Breaking down the silos (reflections on what key figures see as issues on the agri-health divide, and how they may be brought together)

12.00 – 13.00  Panel of speakers, each reflecting a different perspective with questions from audience after each perspective.

Chair: Dr Andrée Carter (UKCDS)

Dr Gert W Meijer (Unilever)
Sir Gordon Conway (Imperial College)
Dr Josef Schmidhuber (FAO)
Prof Chris Whitty (DFID)
Prof  Janet Allen (BBSRC, UK Food Security Initiative)

13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH

Session 3 : A focus on key issues

14.00 – 14.25 Poverty, Agriculture and Health: Lessons from the HIV response
Dr Stuart Gillespie (IFPRI)

14.25 – 14.50 Challenges and successes in linking agriculture and nutrition
Dr Marie Ruel (IFPRI)

14.50 – 15.15 Sustainability, Environment and Climate Change
Prof Tim Wheeler (DFID/Reading)

15.15 – 15.45 Coffee

15.45 – 16.10 Agriculture, Health and Food-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases
Dr Joachim Otte (FAO)

16.10 – 16.35 Metrics and Models for Agriculture and Health Research
Prof Laurette Dube (McGill World Platform for Health & Economic Convergence)

16.35 – 17.30 Closing Address

Organiser: Professor Jeff Waage

Contact email: Jeff.Waage@lidc.bloomsbury.ac.uk