Workshop

Food Systems: Production, Trade, Consumption

This workshop continues the discussion on the reception of “food geographies“ in the German-speaking academia, as initiated e.g. at the “Raum i(s)st Nahrung” meeting in Bayreuth in June 2015. While the quantity and quality of papers presented in Bayreuth illustrated both the broad perspectives and approaches geographers take on this theme, it also showed the need for a further and more in-depth dialogue.

This upcoming workshop will thus focus primarily on questions around the production, trade and consumption of food. These have become increasingly globalised over the past decades, linking producers, traders, manufacturers, retailers and consumers along value chains and networks in different places and (institutional) settings. Apart from these global chains and networks, domestic food systems are also marked by significant dynamics. There are manifold implications of these developments, such as changing farmer livelihoods in both Global North and Global South, changing dimensions of power in value chains, upscaling of production and increasing pushes for standardisation of quality, but also (counter-) movements of “alternative” production systems.