Episode 22 of the Saving the World webinar series features Dr Kate Sievert.
To transition toward healthy, sustainable, and just agri-food systems, attention must be given to upstream drivers that enable extractive practices in industrial food systems, resulting in the proliferation of ultra-processed and animal-source foods, which are associated with environmental degradation, public health burdens, and rising social inequity. Current policy proposals to attenuate these harms often emphasise aspects like novel on-farm technologies, environmental and/or nutrition food labels, or Pigouvian taxes to account for negative externalities. While potentially beneficial, these measures fail to comprehensively tackle the structural drivers of industrial agri-food systems. By examining financialised influences behind the production of ultra-processed and intensive animal-source foods, common leverage points for policy to attenuate production and consumption of both food categories can be identified.
Read this recent paper, led by Kate, to get a head start on some of the issues she will discuss during the webinar.
The ‘Saving the World’ webinar series, presented by the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse, releases a new episode each month, discussing the intersections between climate change, inequity and human health. The webinars focus on actions that enable transformative change away from the harmful consumptogenic system to systems that promote good health, social equity and environmental wellbeing.
Event Speakers
Dr Kate Sievert
Dr Kate Sievert is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on the political economy of global food systems.
Dr Hridesh Gajurel
Dr Hridesh Gajurel is a Laureate Research Fellow with the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse in the School of Regulation and Global Governance. He is a political economist who specialises in comparative capitalism, corporate governance, financialisation, and new institutional theory.