Food and Landscape: Recording for Posterity

Symposiast Len Fisher introduces his talk ‘Global Warming and the Changing Global Food Landscape: The Need to Preserve Diversity’ at the 2017 Symposium

“Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?”

Well, one thing that future speakers might like to do for posterity is to record their talks and post them here on the symposium website for the interest of others who could not attend the symposium or the talk. It is something that I personally have been a bit nervous about doing, but this year I bit the bullet, handing my iPhone to a helpful audience member, whose name I unfortunately missed, and asking her to record the talk. She did a wonderful job, keeping the recording steady simply by rest the phone on a seat arm. I have put the video up on YouTube, and at Elisabeth Luard’s suggestion I am posting the link here:

The talk itself was also concerned with posterity, and addressed the problem of how we can best preserve and protect the global food landscape in the face of the effects of global warming. As other speakers at the symposium pointed out, diversity and the encouragement of traditional farming methods offer many advantages. The message of my own talk was simple: Diversity is also the key to promoting resilience in our food systems in the face of global warming.

It is a message that is backed by findings from the FAO, the World Economic Forum, and numerous other responsible bodies. It is also backed by scientific observation: the food and agricultural systems that recover most quickly from the effects of extreme weather events are those that exhibit the most diversity. In the talk, I outlined the scientific reasons why this should be the case.

Now all we need to do is to get politicians and other decision-makers to listen.

IMAGE: World Economic Forum, with permission.