“Sustaining Food Security In The Changing Climate”

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Providing sustainable food for the increasing population in an unavoidable changing climate is extremely challenging. Natural disasters, the El-Nino and La-Nina phenomenon, the spread and severity of pests, disease, and the decreasing of agricultural lands contribute a significant cause to food security. On the other hand, invention, innovation, and application of agricultural technology keep improving food security and poverty alleviation. For the particular instance, the efforts are worthiness; however, the gap between the poor and the rich keeps widening and becoming more severe in this millennium era, where the poor are illiterate in technology. It seems the poor has no more space to sustain their life until the wise rich men give hands. As far as the neoliberal systems are accepted as it is, without considering the local wisdom and local capacity, the goal of human life to live in peace and hand in hand in scarcity of resources is unachievable.

The use of food knowledge in the process of food selection, processing, preservation, packaging, and distribution to ensure nutrient adequacy, food sufficiency, and food safety, the use of agricultural machinery, irrigation technology, and other instruments in crop cultivation, as well as the application of smart farming couple with the use of renewable energy, are promising to reach and sustain the food security. These applications ensure food security by increasing agriculture production, reducing yield losses, ensuring the availability of safe and nutritious food, eradicating pests and disease with appropriate control measures, developing appropriate technology to mitigate and adapt to the climate change effect, and developing infrastructure in agriculture. At the same time, the proper development policy and social-economic engineering can solve the social gap.

Much research has been conducted in these fields and needs to be disseminated through some platforms, including publications and conferences. As one of the stakeholders in this field, the Agribusiness Department, Faculty of Agriculture University of Mataram, organizes an international conference on Sustaining Food Security Systems in Changing Climate. This conference is supported by Agricultural Faculties from Eastern Indonesian Universities, collaborating with the Indonesian Agribusiness Association (AAI), and Indonesian Agricultural Economics Association (PERHEPI).

This conference aims to provide a platform for academicians, researchers, practitioners, and the public in disseminating their studies and exchanging information. The conference also offers an opportunity to develop networking between research institutions, universities, government, and industry at local and/or international levels