Taking these “F-words“ seriously: Food and future

By 2050, half a portion of your favourite lunch will be more than twice its current price! Most restaurant, fast food or cafeteria owners might like the sound of this, but will there be enough food to meet the rising demand?

“How can we double the amount of food produced in the world in order to feed nine billion people by 2050?”

We believe this question concerns everyone who eats – from crop experts to farmers, bloggers to readers, young adventurists to old conservatives, food lovers to food haters, and it won’t be fair if the readers of this blog post are left out of this incomplete list.

Amongst all the brilliant suggestions discussed in a World Bank forum, it’s quite interesting but not surprising to see that the second solution proffered was “to get the youth involved”. Getting the youth involved is a brilliant but obvious solution because, in the future,  it will be up to the youth to provide feasible solutions to food security threats. Thus, it won’t be wrong to restate that the youth are actually expected to champion this cause.

How do we inform and form future change agents of the world’s food systems?

As the world population rises, the youth must be proactively engaged in shaping its food systems. Despite variations about what constitutes “food” across geographical spaces and cultures, the importance and contribution of crops to the term cannot be overemphasised. As such, in 2018, YPARD -a network of about twenty thousand young professionals realigned its focus on empowering young agricultural leaders around the world to shape sustainable food systems.

As an organization of young change agents, the YPARD community in alignment with GFAR’s Collective Action for promoting youth involvement in agriculture is glad to be co-designing the IUPAC 2019 Next Generation Programme that will be held in Ghent, Belgium from 19-24 May 2019. The program is being developed in collaboration with global agricultural student association IAAS. There will be two exciting elements in the IUPAC Next Generation Programme:

• The Next Generation Agri Summit (19-23 May 2019). Sponsored by CropLife International, the Agri Summit will offer an innovative program developed by and for young agricultural students and researchers interested and engaged in all aspects of crop protection. It will run parallel with the IUPAC International Congress, offering a unique opportunity to engage with world-renowned leaders in plant protection as well as engage in topics specifically wanted by youth.
• N-GAGE champions: N-GAGE (Next Generation Agricultural Innovators) is an IUPAC 2019 pilot project to select up to 5 promising young agricultural innovators to join the Agri Summit, receive seed funding for their project idea and one-year of mentorship and training opportunities.

What’s on Offer?

IUPAC 2019 is offering 50 sponsored places to the next generation of leaders in crop protection to participate in the four-day Agri Summit in Ghent, Belgium (19-23 May 2019) and link with the IUPAC International Congress.

Want to Apply?

It’s Simple… it can be completed with just one email. The email will need to contain a compelling  1-2 pages application and a couple of illustrations, videos and photos that represent your innovation or idea. Click here to apply.

 

Find original blog post on GFAR blog.