MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11 // 4:30 PM // PORTER HALL 100 // CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Feeding the Future: Climate change, population growth and technology. A conversation with Evan Fraser

Creating food systems capable of sustainably, equitably, and nutritiously feeding 9 billion people while dealing with climate change is one of the 21st century’s “Grand Challenges”. Meeting this challenge is about more than just producing enough-we already produce enough for everyone, but more than a billion are overweight while almost a billion under nourished. To help feed the future we must not only produce the right kinds of food, but must also innovate on food processing and ingredients, make diets more nutritious, cut back on waste/emissions, reduce the amount of water and chemicals we use, and ensure that small scale farmers around the world have access to markets. To explore these issues, this talk will first present the factors that are driving changes in our food systems. Second, this talk will explore where some of these trends are heading.

Evan Fraser stared thinking about agriculture and food systems while spending summers working on his grandfather’s farm in Niagara. There, he watched his stockbroker grandmother make way more money than his grandfather who produced strawberries, melons and sweet corn for local markets. Therefore, it was perhaps unsurprising when he decided it was easier to write and talk about farming than actually try to make a living on it. He passed on inheriting the family farm, opting instead for grad school. Today, he holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and is a full professor of geography at the University of Guelph. He is also the director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT: https://www.cmu.edu/cas/events/2018-19/spring/feeding-the-future.html