Workshop: Seeds, Soil, and Politics Workshop (September 9-14, 2016, University of California, Santa Cruz)

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This award supports international participant travel to a workshop to be held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, September 9-14, 2016. The workshop will bring together researchers who are studying the effects of contemporary developments in food production. Throughout the world, a multitude of factors such as intellectual property laws, genetic engineering, soil health, water scarcity, climatic disruptions, governance and technological change are altering the food provisioning landscape. While each of these factors have been studied in isolation or in relation to one or two others, little is known about how they all come together and whether there are common patterns despite the diversity of societies, governance structures, and environments. This workshop aims to begin to fill that gap, with a particular focus on how the changes filter down to the local level. The workshop is important because it provides a holistic perspective across scales on issues that affect food security everywhere, including in the United States.The workshop is organized around three themes: (1) regulatory systems; (2) local farming practices; and (3) farmer and owner participatory mechanisms. Workshop participants will prepare and circulate papers in advance. The four days of the workshop will be devoted to cumulative discussion, identifying common patterns and processes, and identifying information gaps and future research needs. Findings from the research will be of interest to policy makers, as well as to researchers trying to understand how global trends affect food provisioning at local levels. The award also supports international research collaboration and therefore an improved learning experience for participating graduate students.