One Day Seminar:

Food Security Issues in Asia-Africa

“Strengthening the role of indigenous knowledge toward food security in developing countries”

Food security issues have been global issues nowadays. This food security issues is quite complicated since they involve some stages from supply, maintenance, distribution, and policies. One approach will not be sufficient to solve all the problems. The challenge to provide food in the process of production often depends on the agro-climate or the unique natural resource in every locations which is not typically the same for instance. Another challenge is local culture of the communities really influences food to be consumed by the people whether it is about the type, amount, taste, color, and other related things.

Seeing the facts above, the possible optimal approach which can be done is a specific approach that can optimize and preserve the unique local knowledge to a given culture or society (indigenous knowledge) which can provide food and can give a continuous positive impact to the improvement of community economy and the decrease of poverty as well.

A lot of indigenous knowledge have been found in Asia and Africa. Countries in Asia and Africa are well known to have unique, typical, and specific natural resource and agro-climatology. This condition encourages the richness of unique customs and cultures including indigenous knowledge of Asian and African countries. Today, these countries seem to have similar problems related to preservation of their indigenous knowledge and the utilization of indigenous knowledge to solve food insufficiency problem.

In Wageningen, there are quite many students who come from Asia and Africa. Wageningen is one of the most prestigious universities in the world with it competency in the field of agriculture. This is one of the main reasons why many students from all over the world come to Wageningen including from Asia and Africa. This population will possibly be the agents of change in their own countries in the future and become influencing characters in the world. For that reason, the discussion among students coming from Asia and Africa is very important especially the discussion about food security issues and the solutions which is related to the indigenous knowledge.

Purpose

To facilitate the cross-discipline discussion among the Asian and African students who are studying in Wageningen, the Netherlands. This discussion is expected to improve and encourage the awareness of the students (future leaders of Asia and Africa) to come with new concepts of preservation and utilization of indigenous knowledge in Asian and African countries especially in the developing countries.

Scope of Seminar

To cover several approaches regarding to indigenous knowledge issue such as the success or unsuccess story, positioning general food security issues and also the history of Asia Africa relationship as well. The seminar will be focused on indigenous knowledge in three main sub issues: production technology, social aspect, and culture and policy.

Participants

Asian and African students who are studying in Wageningen and other nearest area, guest speakers related to the selected issues.

Schedule

The seminar will be held in October 19th, 2009 in Wageningen University and Research Center’s Campus.

Registration & Contact Person

Registration for oral presentation are now widely open. For registering as a speaker or as an audience, please fill the form provided by the link:

Register for the seminar here.

For further information, you can direct questions to oneday.seminar.ppiw@gmail.com

Organized by:

Indonesian Student Association - Wageningen