Save the Date: Food Security Symposium

We are excited to announce the symposium “Stressors and Drivers of Food Security: Evidence from Scientific Collections,” which will bring together researchers and experts on scientific collections across disciplines to address issues regarding food security. This symposium will be held September 19 to 21 at the National Agriculture Library in Beltsville, Md., and will be hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Scientific Collections International.

Our symposium aims to take an ambitious look at lessons from history - not only to understand how humans and crops or livestock affect one another, but also to identify what drives food security and lack thereof. We will catalyze a conversation that connects work on early agriculture to the problem of how to feed over 9 billion people by 2050.

From seedbanks and pollinators to ice cores that show ancient slash-and-burn practices, scientific collections have the potential to reveal what affects food supply through time and space. We will gather food security experts - along with representatives of collections from fields such as anthropology, biodiversity, geology, paleontology, veterinary sciences, and more - to discover what evidence exists for these stressors and drivers. How can this evidence show historical booms and busts in agriculture and what does it teach us about the causes of food insecurity? Most importantly, how can this knowledge prepare us for the future?

Symposium Details

Date: 19-21 of September
Location: National Agriculture Library in Beltsville, MD
Hosts: U.S. Department of Agriculture and Scientific Collections International

Interested?

Fill out this form to receive future symposium announcements or email scicoll@si.edu for more information.