A day conference organised by Southampton Fair Trade Group

9:30am registration, 10:15am - 4:15pm.

What is Just Food?

The Just Food? conference will explore links between the fair trade and local food movements, problems within the conventional food industry, and discuss the possibilities of developing an ethical, healthy and sustainable world food system that provides people with a decent living in stable communities.

Speakers include Kath Dalmeny, policy director at Sustain, Sue Branford from GRAIN and Josie Cohen from HungerFREE.

Workshops will feature sustainable eating cookery demonstrations, Claire Plumb's "Food for Thought"--a hands-on look at the global trade of food and how it affects communities, and a look at ethical shopping dilemmas faced by supermarkets and consumers run by the Co-operative College.

Stalls, both selling ethical food and with information about food issues, will be available during tea breaks and at lunch.

What's the problem?

Unjust terms of trade affect the food we eat and the people who produce it, not only in the developing world but also here at home.

In both rich and poor countries, the poor are malnourished. In the rich countries, people pay a smaller and smaller percentage of income for more and more calories, often without proper nutrition; in the poor countries, they pay a higher and higher percentage of income for fewer and fewer calories.

In response to the global food crisis that these imbalances threaten to produce, apparently incompatible movements have emerged – one to develop fair trade abroad, and one to favour products that are produced and sold ethically locally.

But are they really incompatible?

(Please note: Tea and coffee will be available for attendees. Lunch will not be provided, although the Café in the Square [run by Southampton Solent University will be open during the lunch hour and there are a number of restaurants and cafés in the area, including the Art House Gallery Café who are one of our stallholders.)