A Loaf of Bread…

Invitation to the Conference: “Designing a Resilient Future: Food, Technology, and Sustainable Development”, Ipack-Ima, May 20, 2015, at 2:00 PM, 1st floor, Martini Hall, Congress Center

We are coming to these events as the generation that globalized the market, polluted the environment, and accentuated inequalities, generating opulence next to misery, and afflictions due to excessive food next to those of hunger.
However, in the Ipack-Ima stands, we can also see an extraordinary variety of innovative and safe technological solutions that are also respective of the environment. At the same time, all possible kinds of foods and food traditions can be seen in the EXPO stands from all over the world.

This means that we have all the tools and knowledge needed to conquer hunger, improve health and protect the environment. So why are we so worried by the prospect that the world’s population may reach nine or ten billion by the year 2050? Why do we accept the fact that hundreds of millions of people continue to suffer hunger and moreover exactly in the countries that have the highest potential for producing food in terms of soil and climate? Why are the most privileged consumers increasingly distrustful of technologies and the industrial enterprises that produce and sell food?

The Ipack-Ima Conference on May 20 will attempt to give some answers to these questions by presenting new development models for the agro-food systems. We want to discuss options that may create favorable economic conditions to re-establish collaborative relationships within the food chains, transparent and unambiguous behavior of food chain actors, and solutions that are consciously chosen and not passively accepted.

This conference has a challenging title: “Designing a Resilient Future: Food, Technology, and Sustainable Development”, but the message is as simple as a loaf of bread. We have chosen bread, a powerful and universal symbol , to say: “let’s get back to the essentials, to a good balance between man’s actions and nature, to a community spirit beyond the confines of business”.
This conference will provide the precious raw material for a book in which we intend to publish the presentations as our contribution to the worldwide debate about the future of food … in a spirit of simplicity and friendship, like sharing a loaf of bread.
Please, come, you won’t be sorry.

(Claudio Peri, Chairman of the Conference; Professor Emeritus of the University of Milan; claudio.peri@fastwebnet.it)

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Photo Olio Officina

Claudio Peri