Transport will be provided on the day from Exeter University & St. David’s Train Station, Exeter – leaving at 10 a.m. and returning for 6 p.m.)

Panellists:
Prof. Mike Goodman (University of Reading); Dr. Emma Roe (University of Southampton); Dr. Matt Reed (The Countryside and Community Research Institute); Andy Bragg (West Town Farm); Martyn Bragg (Shillingford Organics); and Ashclyst Farm & Dairy.

Group Facilitators:
Dr Emma-Jayne Abbots (UWTSD); Dr Mags Adams (University of Salford); and Dr Agatha Herman (University of Reading).

Rationale:
Although food waste is beginning to appear on academic and political agendas there has been a tendency to frame the problem around individual food practices, and much less work has been done on how food becomes framed as waste at other nodes within food systems. Through employing a mixture of panel sessions, provocations, hands on sessions and group work, this symposium will bring together academics, food producers, food retailers and food activists in order to approach the problem of food waste. We hope this symposium will enable a collaborative process of agenda setting for future research into food waste, food knowledges and food practices.

Abstract:
Food matters are increasingly contested as lively materials that shape issues around human health and wellbeing as well as impacting on ecosystems through their production, consumption and disposal. Food materials decay rendering food inedible. Food material can be seen as unknown, unfamiliar and undesirable for consumption. Food matters can contain anxieties over provenance, authenticity and wider material impacts on our ecosystems and our bodies. However solutions to knowing food, addressing food waste and increasing access to fresh food are contested. Examples of this include the use of waste food to address issues of food poverty, processing technologies precluding edible food from reaching the consumer, or food labelling inhibiting edible food from being consumed. Through this participatory event we seek to explore these issues by not only generating debate for academic research, but by also getting our hands on food matters, and engaging with local producers’ food stories and food knowledges. By incorporating practical hands- on sessions to produce our lunch with ‘waste’ food and hearing on-the-ground experiences of producers and activists, we seek to ground academic debate on production- consumption-waste pathways with the matter of food itself, and to co-create knowledges for ongoing research collaboration.

A symposium dinner will be held in the evening at a venue to be confirmed.

Organised in collaboration with:
Love Local Food, West Town Farm, OrganicARTS, Ashclyst Farm & Dairy, Shillingford Farm. With support from the Nature, Materialities & Biopolitics (NaMBio) research group of the Department of Geography in the University of Exeter, the Social & Cultural Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (SCGRG RGS-IBG), the South-West Doctoral Centre of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC SWDTC), and the Catalyst Project at the University of Exeter.

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