In keeping with our goal of sharing diverse perspectives on food systems worldwide, TABLE is delighted to announce that it is expanding the collaboration. We are very pleased to welcome two new partner organizations to the TABLE family: Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

The following interview was originally recorded in October 2021 between podcast co-host Samara Brock and the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, Shalmali Guttal. It has been edited for clarity and length.Focus on the Global South (Focus) is an Asian activist, policy research think tank that works with social movements, civil societies, government officials and the public on various aspects of globalization, economic financial policies, and environmental ecological issues. Focus brings diverse actors together to share and deepen the analysis of emerging power patterns and power relations, and to build broad collective mobilizations for global change. It produces analyses that illuminate relations of power, how they create and perpetuate inequality, exclusion, environmental destruction, and entrench marginalization at national, regional and international levels. It also aims to generate high quality, credible and accessible materials that contextualize, inform and support people’s struggles. 

Over the last few months, we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming our collaborator and advisory board member Elena Lazos Chavero to TABLE’s Oxford office. Elena is a social anthropologist based at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico since 1992 whose work focuses on rural conflicts and development, food sovereignty, the institutional dynamics of social-ecological systems, and much more. In a fascinating discussion over a cup of tea this autumn, TABLE researchers Tamsin Blaxter and Hester van Hensbergen spoke with Elena about her career, the complexities of Mexican food politics, and the ever evolving meanings of food sovereignty and food security. You can read the conversation, which has been edited for length, below.

The UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change (‘COP’) has been getting steadily bigger over its almost 30-year history. Does size matter in the climate agenda, and how does the format of the conference further, or limit, its goal of international cooperation? This article considers the impact of expansion, and what it means for food systems. Ruth attended COP28 as part of a role with another organisation, Sri Lanka-based think tank SLYCAN Trust. She also attended the 2022 COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh as an employee of the Scottish Government. 

Food systems actors are increasingly turning to stakeholder participation to ‘co-produce’ solutions to challenges. At a workshop on participatory research, blog authors Soujanya Mantravadi and Hannah Gardiner noticed differences in understanding of participatory concepts between their two disciplines - industrial information systems and food justice in communities, respectively. In this blog they consider the implications of those differences for community-industry collaboration and highlight some key practices for working across disciplines.Hannah Gardiner (they/them) is a community activist and PhD researcher in food justice/systems and social science at the University of Plymouth. Soujanya Mantravadi (she/her) is an engineer and postdoc in industrial systems and supply chains at the University of Cambridge.

As many welcome the novel spotlight on food systems at COP28, the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in the United Arab Emirates this month, authors Cleo Verkuijl and Jeff Sebo call for a renewed focus on animal welfare and the ethical price being paid for a narrow and inattentive focus on emissions reduction. About the authors: Cleo Verkuijl is a scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute US and a visiting research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Programme. She has served as a coordinating lead author of three UN climate policy assessments. Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program, Director of the Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His most recent book is Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves.