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World experts gather to foster sector convergence, long-term solutions

On November 8th and 9th 2008, the McGill Health Challenge Think Tank will host 鈥淕reen Revolution 2.5: From Crisis to Convergence in Agriculture, Agri-Food and Health,鈥� an unprecedented collaboration among some of the world鈥檚 most innovative thinkers to examine how business and communities can contribute to the growing effort to ensure food and nutrition security worldwide.

Sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the workshop will draw internationally respected voices from agriculture, food manufacturing and marketing, and finance, along with experts in health, nutrition, community development and cultural change in countries from North America to China and India. Participants represent academia, government, NGOs, health and community organizations, and multinational corporations including Cargill, Unilever, Nestle and McDonald鈥檚.

Green Revolution 2.5 will be co-chaired by Laurette Dube, James McGill Chair in Consumer and Lifestyle Psychology and Marketing, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, and, from the World Health Organization: Jorgen Schlundt, Executive Director, Food Safety Department; Francesco Branca, Director, Nutrition for Health and Development, and Nick Drager, Acting Director and Senior Advisor, Department of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law.

The workshop will be held at Montreal鈥檚 Centre Mont-Royal, adjacent to the McGill University campus, following the fifth annual McGill Health Challenge Think Tank conference, 鈥淐hildhood Obesity: Active Living and Energy Balance,鈥� Nov. 5-7 and its satellite research workshop, Nov. 3-5.

Green Revolution 2.5 begins with the premise that what the Economist, in April, 2008, called the 鈥渟ilent tsunami鈥� of catastrophic food price increases is really three crises that need to be addressed as related symptoms of a more insidious systemic illness afflicting agriculture, agri-food, and health worldwide:

• Food and Nutrition Security: The dramatic increase in global average food prices by more than 80% in the past three years has shockingly underscored the precariousness of supply and price predictability, access and availability.
• Caloric Excess: Health care costs driven by an epidemic of obesity and its chronic disease consequences have soared worldwide.
• Food Safety: Breaches in national and global food safety systems have resulted in increasingly frequent outbreaks of cross-national food contamination.

This workshop stands on the shoulders of the original Green Revolution, which harnessed philanthropy, science and technology to preempt widespread famine between 1945 and 1970, and Green Revolution 2.0, unveiled in 2006 by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a group co-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to orchestrate radical change in African agriculture.

Green Revolution 2.5 will build on the goals of both AGRA and the United Nations Comprehensive Framework for Action, produced in response to the recent global food crisis. It will address the challenges and possibilities that food safety presents for small holder farmers, and will anticipate the risk of over-consumption and its health consequences.

The workshop will convene some of the world鈥檚 best minds to develop a vision and a portfolio of actions. While acknowledging the power and challenges of globalization, it will address the three crises behind the steady stream of alarming food-related headlines and ensure food and nutrition security.

Workshop co-chair Laurette Dube said the effort is particularly timely given the current economic crisis. 鈥淲e need new pathways for sustainable development in both developing and developed countries that factor in both the long-term shocks of economic growth and now the shorter-term shocks of shrinking investment, without having to pay the high toll of these three crises,鈥� she said.

Prof. Dube is Founding Chair and Scientific Director of the McGill University Integrative Health Challenge Think Tank and the McGill World Platform for Better Health and Economic Convergence, a new global knowledge initiative to be launched in 2009 at McGill University.