India to host a key regional “EU-India region” hybrid workshop on Sustainable Food Systems in Delhi

Climate change, loss of biodiversity and the degradation of our lands and oceans are existential threats, which are fast resulting in soil depletion, extreme weather events and nutrition issues. In response to these threats, a hybrid regional workshop “Dialogues on Sustainable Food Systems: from production to consumption” will be organized by the European Union (EU) on 27-28 March 2023 in New Delhi.

The EU-funded workshop will bring together key experts, policy makers as well as public stakeholders from the European Union, India and its neighbouring countries to discuss “Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems”.

This dialogue session will seek to exchange views in order to find common grounds, principles and actions, while identifying a way forward to further reinforce and amplify regional cooperation. In particular, discussions/exchanges will focus on how the EU and the Indian sub-continent (India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh) can join forces move towards sustainable and resilient food systems.

Soil health and organic production; sustainable use of pesticides and antimicrobials and food loss and waste, will be deliberated on during this fifth workshop financed by the EU project “Farm to Fork – F2F”.

All three topics will allow the multiple stakeholders of the food systems to identify strategies, policies and practices that could lead to different levels of desirable change. Presentations from speakers from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will be followed by a panel discussion on existing or foreseeable synergies between approaches that could pave the way for collaboration, including how this collaboration could support the transition at global level.

As part of the its Green Deal, EU has proposed ambitious actions and commitments to transform its food systems (the Farm to Fork Strategy) into global standards for competitive sustainability, the protection of human and planetary health, as well as the livelihoods of all actors in the food value chain.