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  • Café Sciences - Fondation FrancoSciences Pays-Bas

    “Food Sovereignty and Food System Sustainability: Friends or Foes?”

  • Recent geopolitical shocks and shifts have moved food security and sovereignty to be top priorities for agrifood agendas across Europe. The transformation necessary for these priorities is a source of discussion and contestation, however. For example, at the European level, critics consider the current momentum for regulatory simplification at odds with necessary incentives to make agriculture more sustainable and ensure healthy, reliable food production in the long run. Conversely, the ambitious vision set out in Europe’s Farm to Fork Strategy to green European agrifood has been met with strong concerns over its impact on the costs and viability of farming, and the risk for food security and sovereignty. Taken together, the current debate often suggests that food sovereignty and food system sustainability are foes. In this interactive debate, we will question this assumption by highlighting how food sovereignty and sustainability can mutually benefit one another, and consider how we can explain and challenge the persistent success behind this adversarial framing.

  • Speakers

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  • Prof. Dr. Hens Runhaar

    Hens Runhaar is Full Professor of Sustainable Food System Governance at Utrecht University. His research, education, and societal impact activities centre round the question what keeps farmers, agri-food companies, consumers, governments, and other stakeholders to switch to food production and consumption practices that are more biodiversity-friendly, have much lower environmental impacts, are resilient to climate change impacts, and that are more fair and healthy.


    In his work, he focuses on the following key lines of inquiry:

    • The roles that key actors play or could play to achieve food system transformation.
    • The formation (or absence) of actor coalitions for food system transformation.
    • The effectiveness of current governance arrangements for food system sustainability.
    • Resistance to change in food system regimes and how to overcome it.


    Hens considers biodiversity as an important indicator of a sustainable food system. Therefore, he is very interested in (the scaling of) agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and ‘nature-inclusive’ agriculture.

  • Dr. Matthijs Mouthaan

    Matthijs Mouthaan is a postdoctoral researcher studying the politics of European agrifood policy and food system transformation. He is broadly interested in the politics of transformative change, considering how particular paradigms, knowledges, and policy instruments are defended or questioned by different actors. In this light, his current research focusses on understanding how actors drive and respond to backlash to transformative policy agenda, for example through polarised versus consensus-oriented politics or science- and ‘evidence-based’ policies versus ‘post-truth’ politics. Empirically, he is interested in applying this question to topical developments relating to European agrifood, such as the implementation of the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture, and recent changes to the Common Agricultural Policy. Theoretically, his analytical perspective is inspired by transition studies, science and technology studies, and sociology. Before his postdoctoral position, Matthijs was part of the Norwegian research centre INTRANSIT (Innovation Policy for Industrial Transformation, Sustainability and Digitalization) as a PhD candidate. In this role, he examined the role of digitalisation, data, and quantification more broadly for transformative marine governance, drawing on cases in Norwegian aquaculture, deep sea mining, and European marine policy.

  • Registration

  • CONTACT INFORMATION

  • Format: (000) 000-0000.

  • PROGRAMME

    Please note that the programme may be subject to slight changes

  • 19:00 - Welcome of the guests

    19:15 - Presentation of the Café Sciences and the activities of the Fondation FrancoSciences Pays-Bas

    19:30 - Short introductory lecture by both presenters

    20:00 - Discussion with the audience

    20:45 - Conclusion 

    21:00 - Closing of the event 

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