The ways that we meet the nutritional needs of our communities, while also protecting the planet, promoting healthy lives, and ensuring food justice are among the greatest challenges facing our Nation and the world today. Centuries of unsustainable agricultural practices and inequitable food distribution place our food systems in peril. How to address these challenges and feed a hungry population raise transformative issues for our communities and academics committed to sustainability and food justice throughout the world.

The Community of Food, Society & Justice Conference, October 17 and 18, will engage students, faculty, staff, farmers, and the community in rigorous dialogue around these challenges. The conference will be structured around a foundation of interdisciplinary scholarship that agrees that recognizing structural relations of power are necessary in order to confront race, class, and gender privileges on issues such as food justice.  You can see the full schedule here. 

Listen to the latest episode of the RC Podcast (at top of the page) for interviews with four of the conference organizers: RC Social Theory and Practice faculty member and conference chair, Virginia Murphy; U-M Sustainable Food Systems Initiative Program Manager, Lilly Fink Shapiro; M Dining Assistant Program Manager, Alex Bryan; and Lecturer in the LSA Anthropology Department, Lisa Young. They describe the four conference panels, the keynote speakers, changes in food access on U-M campus, and why these topics are more urgent than ever. 

Learn more about the RC Podcast and listen to other episodes.