Call for papers for farming systems symposium

Posted 19 November 2015

 Note: deadline extended until January 8, 2016

A call for papers has been issued for the 12th International Farming Systems Association (IFSA) Symposium, being held for the first time at Harper Adams University next summer.

The biennial Symposium, last held in Berlin in 2014, comes to Shropshire, UK, from July 12 to 15, 2016. 

The theme of the Symposium will be: “Social and technological transformation of farming systems: Diverging and converging pathways”. 

The organiser at Harper Adams and current IFSA President, Dr Andrew Wilcox, Head of the Crop and Environment Sciences Department, said: “Farming systems are inherently complex and demonstrate a range of interconnections and dependencies. As changes in farming systems take place all the time, at magnitudes ranging from individual to farm level, from local to global and also to the environments of farming, understanding the nature of these interconnections and dependencies can be challenging.”

“IFSA's 2016 symposium will focus on particular kinds of change – social and technological transformation - and consider not only what is changing in terms of these dimensions and their contexts, but how they relate to each other and how purposeful social and technological transformation of farming systems in different parts of the world are realised and how they could be brought about in the future.”

The sub-themes for the symposium are:

•Innovation, knowledge and learning processes

•Methodology and frameworks of farming systems transformation

•Pathways towards sustainable agri-food systems – tensions or synergies?

•Emergence and application of new technologies

•Enabling governance, policy and institutions

Papers on these themes should be submitted by December 21. Information about the symposium, how to register interest in attending and how to submit papers can be found at harper.ac.uk/ifsa2016