Organiser's description (via the Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems Network):
Livestock plays a contested role in socially just transitions towards sustainable food systems, with its hotly debated effects on nutrition, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity and its unequally distributed contributions to national economies. This Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems (CRILS) Network workshop explores Southern variation in just transitions in the livestock sector, comparing South African and Nigerian vantage points, unpacking complexities and navigating the grey areas between food sovereignty and a fully industrialised economy. We will emphasise intervention points in food system governance to co-create socially just and sustainable livestock systems with farmers, researchers, government and civil society.
Andrew Bennie (Institute of Economic Justice, South Africa) will present on potential routes for a just transition of the beef sector in South Africa, which has predominant arrangements of industrial animal agriculture characterised by socio-economic inequalities. Elujulo Opeyemi (Youth in Agroecology Restoration Network) will present participatory and democratic processes for the transition to agroecology in Nigeria, where livestock rearing is still predominantly small-scale. With recent foreign investments into infrastructure for industrial animal agriculture and regional demographic and economic changes, Nigeria’s livestock sector is at a pivotal point. This workshop will be chaired by Sol Cuevas (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC, Spain).
Additional readings:
- Just Food Transition White Paper Roadmap - From industrial animal production to equitable, humane and sustainable food systems (Co-written by over 50 contributors. 2024): Just Food Transition Roadmap
- The beef with climate change: Growth, equity, and a just transition in the beef sector in South Africa (Tiny Beam Guidance Memo. Andrew Bennie and Andrew Bowman. 2024): The beef with climate change
