Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the University of Évora present the

SALSA Project Final Conference

Can small farms and food businesses improve people’s access to more and better food in our globalized world?

Thursday, 25 June 2020 from 10:00 to 11:00 and from 11:30 to 13:00 (CET)

Please register to follow the virtual event through the Zoom conferencing platform.

The webcast will be streamed live on YouTube in English.

For more information click here.

The Research and Extension Unit (AGDR) of FAO participates in SALSA – Small Farms, Small Food Businesses and Sustainable Food Security, an EU-funded research project of the Horizon2020 program which run from April 2016 to July 2020 with the aim to provide a better understanding of the role of small farms and small food businesses in meeting the sustainable food and nutrition security (FNS) challenge.

SALSA – Small Farms, Small Food Businesses and Sustainable Food Security, is an EU-funded research project of the Horizon2020 program which run from April 2016 to July 2020 with the aim to provide a better understanding of the role of small farms and small food businesses in meeting the sustainable food and nutrition security (FNS) challenge. SALSA pioneered a novel integrated multimethod approach in 30 regions across 19 countries in Europe and Africa using the most recent satellite technologies, transdisciplinary approaches, food systems mapping and participatory foresight analysis.

The Final Conference will take place on 25 June 2020 and will be divided into two main parts:

Part A – 10:00 – 11:00 (CET)

Overview and highlights of main results from the SALSA project

The first part of the Conference aims to summarise and illustrate SALSA’s main results including:

• new concepts and theory developed by the project with respect to small farms and food businesses;
• the validated SALSA methodology, used for identification of small farms crop types, crop area and production estimates, as well as regular monitoring of small farms’ production;
• the novel typology of small farms identified and their importance within food systems;
• Food systems’ maps which unveil the role of small farms and their market linkages within the food systems.

Part B – 11:30 – 13:00 (CET)

Enabling governance and policy recommendations for small farms and small food business

SALSA has aimed to contribute to strengthen the role of small farms and small food business in regional food systems.

This second part of the Conference highlights two of the main SALSA’s contributions in this regard:

• the identification and characterisation of enabling governance frameworks for small farms and small food business;
• tailored and fit-for-purpose multilevel policy recommendations.
• These are particularly crucial in the midst of relevant processes of policy reform in the European Union (CAP and its National Strategic Plans, ‘Farm to Fork’ and ‘Biodiversity’ new strategies, EU-Africa Strategy), as well as in the frame of the current COVID-19 crisis and its impacts on the food system.

The two sessions will welcome the active participation and questions from the audience.

The Programme of the Conference and the bios of the speakers are also available at this link

FAO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in July 2018 with the Italian Research Institutions: the National Research Council (CNR); the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA); the National Agency for New Technologies, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA); and the Italian Institute for Environmental Research and Protection (ISPRA). The overarching objective of the cooperation between FAO and CNR, CREA, ENEA and ISPRA is the promotion of sustainability at large in the context of joint efforts for achieving Agenda 2030.

This cooperation also promoted the secondment of staff and researchers from the developing countries to work with Italian Research Institutes. As part of the joint work plan, there were number of activities successfully completed including the research work of the visiting scientists to ENEA from Burkina Faso, Republic of the Congo and Cameroon. To promote communication initiatives aimed at enhancing the impact and visibility of the activities undertaken in the context of MoU, FAO’s Research and Extension Unit (AGDR) and the National Agency for New Technologies, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) are jointly organizing a webinar on “Promoting collaborative research for sustainable agri-food systems for achieving Agenda 2030”.

This webinar will focus on the results of the research work carried out by the visiting scientists from Africa to ENEA in the field of microbiome application for sustainable agri-food systems.

The webinar will be an opportunity for all partners of the MoU to briefly share their reflections and to promote interactive discussion on the topics of presentations.

Presentations:

• The ENEA Initiatives in supporting the Sustainable Agri-food systems: ENEA–TWAS Research Training Fellowships Programme 2018-2020 (Massimo Iannetta, ENEA)
• Antifungal activity of local plants extracts against seed-borne fungi in Burkina Faso (Leon W. Nitiema, Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles (INERA), Burkina Faso)
• Soil organic matter, C and P dynamics in the mixed-species plantations of Acacia and Eucalypts in the Congolese coastal plains (Stella-Koutika, Research Center on Sustainability and Productivity of Industrial Plantations (CRDPI), Republic of the Congo)
• Optimization of the antimicrobial efficiency of low thermal treatment of fruit juices in combination with natural aroma compounds (Alex Dimitri Tchuenchieu Kamgain, Centre for Food and Nutrition Research, IMPM, Cameroon)
• Microbiome application for sustainable food system: from field to food quality and safety (Annamaria Bevivino, ENEA)

Target audience:

Researchers and development practitioners interested and engaged in agricultural research on agri-food systems and related topics.

Registration:

The webinar has limited number of participants, thus we invite your early registration here. It will also help us to stay in touch and keep you informed on our next webinars of the partnership between FAO and the Italian Research Institutions! The webinar will be in English, for duration of 100 minutes.