Food sustainability: from global problem to opportunity for socio-economic regional development
With Resolution No. 461 of 2019, the Regional Council of Emilia Romagna Region expressed the willingness to relaunch development and employment in our territory.
The growth of the community and its ability to generate good employment are based on the increase in the ability to create added value, acting on the development and dissemination of knowledge and skills and, therefore, on a broad capacity for innovation in production and services to businesses and individuals.
Investing in the creation and transfer of new knowledge and new skills is a necessary condition for strengthening those system capabilities that support innovation and development.
From these assumptions was born the invitation to present projects capable of creating and transferring "strategic knowledge oriented towards specialization, internationalization and social, organizational and economic innovation that is not limited to technology, but to all the forms that it can assume, united by an intensive use of creativity and ingenuity.”
The School of Advanced Studies on Food and Nutrition has responded to this invitation with the project "Food sustainability: from global problem to opportunity for socio-economic regional development"
The theme of the project starts from the growing demand for food, possibly quality food, and the need for the production system to reduce its impact on the planet's resources. A problem that is becoming increasingly pressing and of which humanity is gradually becoming aware. According to a report recently published by the United Nations, 66% of the world's population will already live in large cities in 2050. This same population is oppressed on the one hand by conditions of undernourishment and lack of food resources, but on the other, above all regards the urbanized component, by a vertical increase in the risk of chronic-degenerative diseases.
The School's project "Food sustainability: from global problem to opportunity for socio-economic regional development" was therefore born in response to the invitation of the Emilia Romagna region and from the belief that the current condition generates the need to train figures who are fully aware of the emergency and who, at least in their specific operating contexts, are able to deal with it thanks to the availability of skills built on the most recent scientific evidence.
In the context of sustainable food production, the path towards improvement cannot ignore the collaboration between the public and private sectors, between companies and research institutions, with the establishment of an active and participatory network of agri-food chains involving consumers, companies, institutions, scientific research and associations.
Emilia-Romagna is the perfect scenario for the training of such fundamental figures for the future of our food system, especially in light of the strong agri-food vocation and the very strong interaction between the municipalities and universities operating in the territory.
The project intended to train figures in an international context that allowed the contamination between realities with different uses, traditions and problems, to make them capable, operational and strategic at the local level. In fact, the local context will be the one in which the fate of our future will be played out, the one in which reference models will be developed that can be exported and adapted to other local contexts, creating a virtuous global network.
Specifically, the project encluded three editions of the "International Summer School in Food Sustainability" and two editions of the First Level International Master called "Food City Design" as well as various dissemination activities, also in collaboration with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Piacenza.
At the University of Parma:
International Summer School on Food Sustainability
Master Universitario di I livello “Food City Design”
Workshop dal titolo “Toward a EU Sustainable FOOD SYSTEM: Legal option and challenges”
Ciclo di seminari dal titolo "Storia di vita imprenditoriale: La gastronomia di Parma: i prodotti, il territorio, le imprese e le persone"
Workshop dal titolo La sostenibilità delle filiere degli alimenti di origine animale: il tema dei sottoprodotti
Webinar dal titolo “Novel Food” e pubblicazione in open access del volume “Novel Food and Edible Insects - An Interdisciplinary Analysis”
Webinar dal titolo "Towards the future of food: the cultured meat between food safety, sustainability and public perception"
Workshop dal titolo “Intervento multi-strategico per promuovere l'implementazione di una politica di mensa universitaria sana e sostenibile”
At the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Piacenza:
Webinar dal titolo Circularity and Sustainability in the food system -PREVIEW EVENT
Webinar dal titolo Circularity and Sustainability in the Food System
Webinar dal titolo “Farm to Table: good practices for sustainable food system”
Seminario “AGROVOLTAICO- Transizione energetica e decoarbonizzazione in agricoltura”
