IFSA 2012 workshop ‘The meaning of semi-subsistence farming in different cultural contexts’

Together with Imre Kovach and Catherine Darrot,  I will be hosting a workshop at the IFSA symposium in Aarhus, Denmark from the 1st of July until the 4th of July 2012. The workshop is aimed at exploring the multiple meanings of semi-subsistent food production strategies in different cultural context. Two questions are at the centre of [...]

Urban Ag and Revolution

They claim to be the only example of rooftop farming in Porto Alegre. Hence, a revolutionary example in many ways. A student of last week’s class kindly offered to showed me around in Porto Alegre including unusual places such as the movement-community-cooperative COOPSUL. Right in the middle of the centre a building was squatted in 2005 related to the [...]

CS: Food crisis? Strategies to transform our food system: course outline

On the 16th of October it is World Food Day. The theme this year 2011 is ‘Food prices –from crisis to stability’. Price swings, upswings in particular, represent a major threat to food security in developing countries. It is predicted that instability in the world food economy will continue during the decade to come. What [...]

Working group at 24th ESRS congress in Chania, Greece 22-25 August 2011: Call for papers

Imre Kovách ( Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest), Petra Derkzen and I are organising a working group on “the governance of semi-subsistent food and farming strategies in the countryside and city- a compartive perspective” at the 24th ESRS congress in Chania (Greece) from 22-25 of August 2011. We would [...]

Rural women in Europe: invest in the vitality of rural areas to improve their position

The report ‘Personal and social development of women in rural areas of Europe’, prepared for the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, provides an overview of the social situation of women in the rural areas of Europe. It looks into rural women’s work, political participation and their experience of the quality of life [...]

Urban farm providing care for the homeless in Rotterdam

Last week I visited a vegetable and flower garden right in de centre of Rotterdam, on a triangular piece of land squeezed in between the former Shell Head Quarters, the railway going into the tunnel heading South, and the Pompenburg road, flying over the mouth of the railway tunnel towards Hofplein. This garden suddenly appeared [...]

PUREFOOD – 12 vacancies for ESRs are open

As mentioned in an earlier post on this weblog, the Rural Sociology Group has been granted the the coordination of a Marie Curie Initial Training Network  entitled ‘Urban, peri-urban and regional food dynamics: toward an integrated and territorial approach to food (PUREFOOD)’ funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework PEOPLE program. The objective of PUREFOOD is to train a [...]

Repeasantisation in Araponga, Brazil – a quest for space

By Leonardo Ayabe van den Berg, MSc graduate International Development Studies Recently I completed my MSc-thesis. The thesis research is set in the municipality of Araponga in Brazil, where (re)peasantisation occurred and continues to occur. Here I describe some of the findings of my research.  When interested you can downlaod a pdf of my thesis ‘Invisible peasant [...]

Foundation for Tomorrow (Koken voor Morgen)

Friday the 15th of January I was at the closing event of the Foundation for Tomorrow workshop cycle which aims to educate women about the water footprint of home cooking. The women who attended the cooking workshops were awarded a special certificate to acknowledge their expertise on cooking home made meals more sustainably. More that [...]

Foodprint Sitopia

On Monday 3 November Stroom Den Haag (an independent centre focusing on the urban environment from the visual arts, architecture, urban planning and design) organized a small workshop as part of its program entitled ‘Foodprint – food for the city”. Foodprint takes place over the course of several years and focuses on the influence food can [...]