Town Hall Seattle: Civics Series
Town Hall’s Civics series highlights everything from local policies to world politics. These events offer perspectives on a range of topics as diverse as Seattle itself—a bustling forum for activism, discovery, and thought-provoking discussion.
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Nov 18, 2019
Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—especially at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. To explore agricultural avenues open to us in the near future, researcher Timothy A. Wise presented insight from his book Eating Tomorrow, in conversation with sustainable agriculture activist Million Belay. Together, Wise and Belay explored how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests.
Wise and Belay revealed how most of the world is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what to grow and how. They asserted that we must rely on these same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—to show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Listen in with Wise and Belay for a deep dive into the present and future of global agriculture.
Timothy A. Wise is a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, and is a senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. He previously served as executive director of the US-based aid agency Grassroots International. Wise is also the author of Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico
Million Belay has worked for over two decades on intergenerational learning of bio-cultural diversity, sustainable agriculture, and food sovereignty and forest issues, first as founder of MELCA – Ethiopia, an indigenous NGO and now as coordinator of AFSA-Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. AFSA advocates for agroecology, and supporting the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples to their land.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Community Alliance for Global Justice. Recorded live in The Forum on October 30, 2019.