The need for resilient food systems comes into stark relief during a crisis. Responses must be agile and adaptive, facilitating the quickest possible recovery while equipping these systems to adaptively manage or avert crises in the future.
The event theme, Digital Dynamism for Adaptive Food Systems, will examine food system resilience and highlight how digital tools and technologies can help us sense, respond and (re)build better systems in times of global food security crises.
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Conventions to date:
1.5K
attendees
8K
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Sectors
500+
speakers
USD2.5M+
awarded in grants
60M
people reached
What is digital dynamism?
Digital tools and technologies are effective when they are designed with adaptability, interoperability, and precision in mind. The BIG DATA Platform will explore not only how technologies can build resilient food systems, but how stakeholders can build technologies that respond and adapt to changing challenges.
“Digital dynamism” refers to the new food system-wide capabilities that can be built in the context of rapidly digitizing economies and societies worldwide, leveraging their speed, adaptability, ease of connection across actors and domains, the potential precision of resulting tools and practices, and new avenues for reaching scale.
The first “One CGIAR” event
As the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, CGIAR brings evidence to policymakers, innovation to partners, and new tools to harness the economic, environmental, and nutritional power of agriculture.
This will be the first One CGIAR hosted convention, leveraging inclusive inputs from each of the global Centers offering a glimpse of how they are employing digitally-enabled, dynamic methods to combat global food security challenges flowing from current crises.
Key discussion themes
This event will examine what it takes to build long term resilient food systems that leverage collaboration between CGIAR Centers, global agripreneur networks, food companies, crisis relief organizations, and local actors.
Agile digital technologies
Examining the promise of transformative digital innovations and how to target them towards response, recovery, and resilience related to food security challenges. Considering, also, the role of analytic frameworks and big data computation in building these adaptive value chains.
Natural and digital ecosystems
Food security in the times of crisis
Measuring and building resilience: To build a resilient food system with the agility to react to shocks as they happen, we need to identify and measure the weak links in our global framework that cause crises.
Inclusive digital transformation
On (re)building inclusive value chains that rebalance local and global, and effective management of gender, and other, exclusion in digital food systems
Event schedule
Mark your calendars!
DAY ONE
21 October 2020, 12:00 – 16:00 CEST
DAY TWO
22 October 2020, 12:00 – 17:30 CEST
DAY THREE
23 October 2020, 15:00 – 19:30 CEST
Featured sessions
Digital dynamism & the data: towards agility, transparency, and sustainability
There is a pressing need for transparency and accountability in food systems – ensuring that they are sustainable for our planet and population. How do we operationalize sustainability aims and existing data to create trusted, timely, actionable and credible information to guide the collective actions we need?
Panelists: Jessica Fanzo, Andrew Knepp, TBD
CGIAR digital strategy
This session will explore the emerging trends in digital technologies and data-driven decision-making and discuss the role the CGIAR can play in addressing these trends.
Panelists: Brian King
Digital innovation in the time of COVID-19
The COVID-19 global crisis has made us take stock and ask – how do we foster innovation in a virtual age? This session will explore the ways in which venture capitalists, incubators, and innovators are redesigning their practices to support entrepreneurs in solving pressing food security challenges.
Panelists: Ram Dhulipala, Vikas Raj, Kyriacos Koupparis
State of the evidence in digital agriculture
What’s the state of evidence in digital agriculture and sustainable development? How can stakeholders provide resources to connect efforts and interventions?
Panelists: Jonathan Mockshell, Raissa Fabregas, Jaron Porciello
Computational Sustainability
Agricultural research for development is constantly evolving to meet changing global demands and integrate new technologies and methods. Currently, applied, responsible digital technology use, leveraging the array and massive amounts of newly available data, has begun to accelerate efforts to generate timely analytics that balance environmental, socioeconomic, biodiversity, and conservation goals. This conversation will explore the past, present and future of agricultural research and examine emerging computational tools that can be used to derive answers to key questions about sustainability, food systems, and development.
Panelists: Cheryl Palm, Danielle Wood, Brian King
Featured Speakers
Director, East and Southern Africa Division, IFAD Chief Economist, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Assistant Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin Agricultural Sustainability Leader | Agronomist Bayer Crop Science
Sara Mbago-Bhunu
Lin Nease
Raissa Fabregas
Andrew Knepp
Assistant Professor, Media Arts and Sciences Program, Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Chief Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics Head of Frontier Innovations, United Nations World Food Programme
Danielle Wood
Maximo Torero
Jessica Fanzo
Kyriacos Koupparis
Research Professor, Soil Biological and Ecological Processes, Institute for Sustainable Food System, University of Florida Founder, WhyFarm
Cheryl Palm
Alpha Sennon
The 2020 Inspire Challengers
Like every year since the inception of the Inspire Challenge in 2017, the 2020 winners will be announced during the Convention.
The Challenge aims to demonstrate the power of big data analytics through inspiring and innovative projects. The COVID-19 related crisis provides a further opportunity to test a key part of our theory of change: that data and digital tools bring critical capabilities for agile adaptation in food systems.
Since in 2017, the Inspire Challenge has awarded a combined total of USD2.5 million in 21 grants to 14 projects, which have have contributed to build the evidence base for digital agriculture.
WHY ATTEND?
Learn from the best
Learn from leading industry experts and scientists, from across the globe, as they discuss current issues and cutting-edge solutions and share their knowledge and expertise.
Expand your network
We are focused on getting people together to connect thought leaders and change-makers in the technology and agriculture world to catalyze impactful new partnerships
Industry Insight
The themes and topics discussed and the innovations presented, are at the frontier of the agricultural transformation. This is your chance to get ahead of the curve and participate in the conversations that will help shape the future of digital agriculture.
Discover cutting edge technology
From demos at the innovation bazaar to in-depth Q&As with industry experts, be the first to discover the latest cutting-edge tools, technological advances and innovation projects that are transforming the agricultural research and development landscape.
Previous conventions
What participants say
Marieke de Ruyter de Wildt Founder, The Fork "Not only was the kick-off very refreshing, the whole convention was packed with nice inspiring surprises. The crowd truly reflected the agricultural ecosystem, very international, all ages, different backgrounds and full of commitment to make sense out of data for better food.” Tonya Nyakeya - THINKLab & Ecosystem Lead, IBM Research “The convention is focused on getting people together and opening the conversation. It is a great opportunity to get the big data in agriculture revolution really moving.” Elwyn Grainger-Jones "The convention offered a glimpse into the huge potential of unlocking our databanks to develop user-friendly technologies capable of driving food system transformation. Big data is at the heart of the future and the transformation of outcome delivery.”
Managing Director, Institutional Strategy and Systems, CGIAR System Organization
Ram Dhulipala Robin Lougee -Research Industry Lead for Consumer Products & Agriculture, IBM “My biggest takeaway was expanding my network of people doing really interesting things in agriculture research. Specifically identifying areas where that research can be applied to our company.” Jehiel Oliver
Strategy & Operations Officer, ICRISAT Innovation Hub (iHub)
CEO, Hello Tractor
Partnerships Opportunities
These were some of our partners and donors from our 2019 convention. Get in touch about opportunities for our 2020 event
Diamond Sponsor
Platinum Sponsor
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