International Certificate course on Sustainable, Local Food Systems begins at Nauni

In a first of its kind, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry(UHF), Nauni in association with UN’s Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched a four week International Certificate Course-‘Sustainable and Local Food Systems’.
In a first of its kind, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry(UHF), Nauni in association with UN’s Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched a four week International Certificate Course-‘Sustainable and Local Food Systems’.

Over 30 participants, mainly scientists and researchers from UHF and five countries including Tanzania, Uganda, Morocco and Malawi are attending this course.

The course is based around the ‘Enabling Sustainable Food Systems: Innovators Handbook’ published by FAO and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). The course is developed in collaboration with the Université Gustave Eiffel. The four week (38 hours) course is combining live online training workshops with self-paced study of online content and a series of assignments. The course has been started under World bank funded ICAR’s NAHEP IDP being implemented at the university.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Rajeshwar Singh Chandel, said that the course aims to help current and future food systems innovators create or transform localized food systems based on farm landscape diversification through agroecology.  It also aims to empower the participants to become a facilitator, capable of using this training template to work with others in their local area, leading to further innovative food systems transformations.

He added that the course will increase the understanding of the concepts of localization and the circular economy and apply it to local food systems. Prof. Chandel added that the participants will be trained to identify a network of local, regional and global innovators with whom to collaborate and further train innovators in your local area on food systems transformation.

Renowned sustainable food systems, entrepreneurship and technology expert Ashish Gupta; Dr Alison Loconto, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Science, Innovation and Society (LISIS) and a Research Professor at INRAE, German experts from Ecoselva along with several international and Indian experts will guide the participants on the various aspects of this course.