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Workshop
Workshop
Workshop

Workshop

On February 1, 2 in Brussels, Belgium, 60 stakeholders from government, industry, civil society, academia, agriculture, and media engaged in lively debate aimed at anticipating and responding to future food crises in Europe.  Participants in this first-ever Food Alert workshop assumed the roles of crisis ‘Task Force’ members entrusted with the crucial role of formulating policy recommendations for senior EU decision-makers, to address an unfolding food crisis. Participants were split into three working groups, each addressing a different aspect of the multifaceted nature of the scenario: Crisis Response Mechanisms, Agriculture & Food Production, and Trade & Finance.

The exercise used a policy simulation scenario to immerse participants in the co-creation of potential policy responses, mitigate the impacts of such a crisis, and closely examine current policy and institutional arrangements and policy response frameworks. Building on various Horizon projects and EU policy documents, workshop participants developed and presented their ideas and proposals for improving and strengthening systemic response capabilities.

Food Alert
What is progressivism
Food Alert Consortium
Listening Inspires
Food Alert participants discussing
Food Alert plenary
Food Alert Piotr Magnuszewski showing examples
Food Alert plenary
Food Alert plenary
Food Alert participants discussing
Food Alert participants discussing
Food Alert participant writing on a flipchart
Food Alert participants discussing
Food Alert plenary
Food Alert participants discussing
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Food Alert participants discussing

It was pretty interesting to see that when you’re in the room together there are differences, but there are also people who understand that changes are needed. Sometimes I like to think bureaucrats think behind their desks and just just think in abstract terms. And here, we could really see that they were thinking: “Okay, this is what’s happening to us. This is what’s happening to Europe. This is what’s happening to the world. This is what we need to do.”

– Bartosz Brzeziński, POLITICO

We can’t predict the future. None of us have a crystal ball. We can make sure that we’re better prepared and we can make sure that we have a better understanding of impacts on the crises and on our food system, and our responses to them and then hopefully we can use this to build resilience.

– Lucy Wallace, EIT Food

In the simulation, it’s quite beautiful to step into another role, and try to think from another role, and then, okay, are there some kind of assumptions, that are not maybe true, or how would this kind of person think. I really like the methodology, it’s very inspiring and concrete.

– Kati Partanen, World Farmers’ Organization

The Food Alert Simulation is a great opportunity for meeting and exchanging among colleagues from all around Europe from different spectrums of the food system, and to start thinking of different scenarios and different stress tests of our strange food system.

– Andrea Magrini, the Food Policy department of the city of Milan

The Food Alerts Workshop has been eye-opening for me. Especially the aspect of being “forced” to take on a completely different perspective, so representing a stakeholder that you normally don’t represent. That was very valuable.

– Isabelle Vreeke, Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality

It is a way to step outside of your own shoes and to work together on solutions that are then not attributed to one single organization and so there’s much more capacity for compromise.

– Milan Petit, SEER

Policy Simulations

Policy simulations take participants into the future to engage them in co-creating policies to reduce risk, build resilience, or achieve other urgent goals. Together, participants will explore research-based future stories offering realistic effects of business-as-usual trends. In their scenario roles as future policy advisors and policy-makers, they will be invited to embrace diverse values and perspectives while negotiating issues linked to a fictional food crisis, accelerating constructive responses that protect the food supply, ensure food security, and foster the achievement of the EU’s environmental, social and economic goals linked to a sustainable food system.

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    Acknowledgments

    The Food Alert Simulation project will benefit from earlier work done in the context of the CASCADES, EU Horizon 2020 project, which explored cascading climate impacts on various aspects of European societies.

    Workshop

    The Food Alert workshop was also greatly assisted by contributions to a specially-created “Technical Working Group” by experts of the OECD and IDDRI (Paris) who worked with project partners to finalize the crisis simulation scenario, to enhance its factual content and accuracy. The workshop was also enhanced by Listening Inspires, an NGO that brings together a rich network of individuals committed to inspiring creative solutions to modern-day challenges through deep listening – to ourselves, each other and Nature.

     

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