2010 Online Summer School on Food Policies
July 19 – October 25 2010

Overall concept

The school will be organized into eight interlinked subject areas (see below), and its final aim will be to produce a guideline document per area addressed to stakeholders (governments, companies, NGOs, institutions) keen to adopt food policies encompassing the latest analyses on ecological, economic, social and sensory sustainability. The school will be structured as an online course running from mid July until mid October, and as a face-to-face course during the Terra Madre event, which will be held in Turin 21-25 October (August will be a “reading month”). For each of the eight subject areas, one or more outstanding international keynote expert(s) (see below) will be invited to contribute. The experts will be assisted by a faculty (coordinated by the Faculty of the University of Gastronomic Sciences) composed by 2-4 teaching staff members. A maximum of five selected international students will be assigned to each subject area (for a total of 40 students). Each keynote expert will draw up an initial draft analysis on which the faculty members and students will subsequently build on by interacting online. Following eight weeks of online teaching sessions (approximately 40 hrs.), the draft document will be discussed during the Terra Madre workshops on October 22. Alongside the Terra Madre food communities the document will be finalized in order to produce a second draft, which will be presented during the closing session (October 24). The final version of the document will be published and translated in all the requested languages by Terra Madre Day (December 10).

Subject areas and subject areas’ leaders

1. Social systems and transformations – Wolfgang Sachs and Serge Latouche
2. Energy and systemic productions – Jeremy Rifkin and Gunter Pauli
3. Biodiversity and ecosystems – Fritjof Capra, Gary Nabhan, and Marcello Buiatti
4. Goods, common resources, and exchanges – Stefano Zamagni
5. Law, rights, and policies – Christoph Spennemann, Daniele Giovannucci
6. Sustainable education – Manfred Max-Neef
7. Traditional knowledge, gender, and immaterial values – Vandana Shiva and Carlo Petrini
8. Pleasure and well-being – Tim Lang

The course will analyze how sustainable food polices need to be developed in the context of the following subject areas:

1. Social systems and their transformations
2. Energy and systemic productions
3. Biodiversity and ecosystems
4. Goods, common resources, and exchanges
5. Law, rights, and policies
6. Sustainable education
7. Traditional knowledge, gender, and immaterial values
8. Pleasure and well-being

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