Food System Resilience in an Era of Globalization and Environmental Change

Originally aired October 19, 2015

An interdisciplinary panel explores food system resilience in its broadest sense — the capacity to respond to disturbances while maintaining essential structure and function in an era of globalization and environmental change. As food systems have become increasingly interconnected globally, panelists examine their sensitivity to a diversity of stressors including peak phosphorus, water scarcity and drought, renewable energy policy, and the telecoupled effects of globalization on traditional land management and rural livelihoods.

Speakers

Dr. Hallie Eakin (Moderator)

Professor, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University

Dr. Hallie Eakin is a Professor in ASU’s School of Sustainability whose research investigates economic globalization, agricultural change, and rural vulnerability to climate change — with comparative international projects spanning Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and Honduras. She currently explores coffee farmers’ adaptive strategies in Mexico and Central America, and has consulted with the World Bank, USAID, and the EPA on agricultural development, drought risk mitigation, and climate adaptation for urban water systems.

Dr. Evan Fraser

Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security, Department of Geography, University of Guelph

Dr. Evan Fraser holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security in the Department of Geography and has built an interdisciplinary research program on rural land use and the socio-economic factors that make food systems vulnerable to climate change. He has authored approximately 50 scientific papers on global food security and two popular non-fiction books, including Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.

Dr. Jennifer Hodbod

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiative, Arizona State University

Dr. Jennifer Hodbod’s research focuses on how to make resilient food systems, examining land-use change, production-consumption trade-offs, and food security through a resilience framework at multiple scales. She completed her PhD at the University of East Anglia within the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, where she examined the impacts of biofuel expansion on social-ecological systems in Ethiopia across food security, livelihoods, environment, and energy security dimensions.

Dr. Bruce Rittmann

Member, National Academy of Engineering; Director, Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Arizona State University

Dr. Bruce Rittmann is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a pioneering researcher in environmental biotechnology at ASU’s Biodesign Institute. Known for advancing biofilm fundamentals and their application to contaminated water and soil cleanup, he also leads research on the Membrane Biofilm Reactor for water treatment and microbial fuel cells for energy recovery. He is a Fellow of AAAS, recipient of the Clarke Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Water Science and Technology, and one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in his field.