June 19, 2008 - News

McGill conference tackles global food crisis
The world is currently facing one of its most serious challenges in ensuring there is enough food for everyone. Changing dietary and food consumption patterns, rising energy prices, climate change, and dramatic natural events like floods and storms are all contributing to critical food shortages and sharply higher prices. As prices have risen, market forces have also begun to play a role in driving cost even higher. The world’s poor are the hardest hit. McGill University has announced a groundbreaking conference of experts this fall to stimulate an important exchange of ideas about how the world can find ways to better cope with the global food crisis. Co-chaired by former Canadian Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Joe Clark, Professor of Practice for Public-Private Sector Partnerships at McGill’s Centre for Developing Area Studies, and McGill University Chancellor Richard Pound, this conference will bring together leading international experts in agriculture, food and nutrition policy and development to discuss a framework for long-term solutions to declining food stocks and rising prices. The McGill Conference on Global Food Security will take place September 24-26 in Montreal.