Food Futures Speaker Series

Food+City is launching a speaker series for students and the general UT community to bring bold exploration of the global food supply chain to campus. Delving into the details, logistics, technology and the daily grind of the "to" in the "Farm to Table" journey, Food+City spurs innovation in food distribution through our Food+City Startup Challenge, a variety of events, and storytelling, both online and with a semi-annual print magazine.  Our goal with this series is to inspire students to create and develop new ways of improving our food systems, provoking fresh perspectives on the realities of how we feed cities.

We need your financial support to bring the movers and shakers of the food supply chain to Austin!  We are beginning our series with local supply chain experts, and luckily, Austin has been recognized in recent years for its supportive startup ecosystem and booming tech climate, so we have an excellent selection close at hand. We'll roll out our series with serial entrepreneur Charles Fry on November 8. This founder of Zengistics transportation company will explain how supply chains work and their impact on feeding cities, as well as why he chose Austin for his company. Students will learn about the logistics of moving craft beer through the cold chain, and the details of distribution which keep restaurants, grocery chains, and cafeterias in operation. 

Moving forward, we plan to sponsor world-renowned thinkers, and we will need your help to fund this project!  Imagine the impact on UT students to have conceptualists like Dickson Despommier, the Columbia University professor known as the "founding father of Vertical Farming," expand their view of ecology, feeding cities in the future, and changing the paradigm of modern agriculture. Remember the profound influence a brilliant thinker and speaker had on you in your youth, when your mind was opened to a new way of seeing the world?  Help us bring such a speaker, American University's Johanna Mendelson Forman, creator of Conflict Cuisine, to share with the UT community a new way of looking at "diplomacy, conflict resolution, and civic engagement" through the study of food in zones of conflict.  Mendelson Forman, who served previously as the Director of Peace, Security and Human Rights at the UN Foundation, looks at how diaspora populations transfer their national foodways to new countries as an extension of their culture. Conflict Cuisine studies the nexus of food and war, and offers an examination of the connection between climate change and its impact on the food supply chain, which drives many of the conflicts seen in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Her multidisciplinary approach to the movement of ethnic food as indicator and as consequence will leave students enriched and informed.

Please help Food+City in building our speaker series on campus, helping us inspire students and improve how we feed cities! We only have a few weeks to raise the money to make this a reality - - please donate today! Your support could create the change you want to see in the world!