How will you celebrate World Food Day?

Each year on Oct. 16, the world takes a moment to raise global awareness of agriculture, hunger, and food issues. World Food Day officially marks the anniversary of the creation of the UN's Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945, and nowadays it aligns with other global events such as this week's World Food Prize activities in Iowa.

Food and agriculture are central to what UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) professionals deal with every day. We're elbows-deep in solving specific problems like pest identification, childhood nutrition in schools, drought-tolerant plant breeding and spreading sustainable agricultural practices.

Britta Hansen and Elise Brockett plant okra and other vegetables at the Horticulture Innovation Lab Demonstration Center, in advance of its grand opening on World Food Day.

World Food Day is a day for all of us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Here are some ways that UC ANR faculty are raising awareness on World Food Day this year. How will you join them?

If you're near UC Davis, two free events invite the public to mark World Food Day:

America's Farm-to-Fork Capital Speakers Series offers participants lunch and an in-depth discussion of the connections between soil health, farm health, healthy foods, and the gut microbiome. These themes are particularly pertinent this World Food Day, as it is also the International Year of Soils. Author Daphne Miller will speak about her book "Farmacology" and then join a panel of academics from UC ANR's Agricultural Experiment Station, specifically Kate Scow and Bruce German, moderated by Tom Tomich. The event will be 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., Friday, at the Buehler Alumni Center on the UC Davis campus. Event details and registration

The Grand Opening of the Horticulture Innovation Lab Demonstration Center will send participants home with a souvenir vegetable seedling and a closer look at some of the technologies and crops that UC academics work with in developing countries. UC ANR Cooperative Extension specialist and pomologist Elizabeth Mitcham is also the director of the Horticulture Innovation Lab and will be joined by Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA), UC Davis CA&ES Dean Helene Dillard, and others to discuss the work that UC Davis and its international partners do to help small-scale farmers in developing countries. This event is particularly pertinent as this year's theme for World Food Day focuses on how agriculture can break the cycle of rural poverty. The event will be at 2 – 3:30 p.m., Friday, on Solano Field, near Nelson Hall on the UC Davis campus. Event details and information about the new demonstration center

Online this week, you can hear UC ANR academics Dan Sumner and Christine Stewart speaking on a panel at the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue, broadcast online via a live stream. They will be speaking 1:30 p.m. PDT, Wednesday, on a panel with UC Davis' Roger Beachy about the UC Davis World Food Center, “Launching a New Initiative - Food for a Healthy World.”

More information about World Food Day can also be found on the FAO website or by browsing #WFD2015 in social media.

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