The MUFPP is pleased to announce the launch of a series of webinars on urban food systems titled “The potential of urban food policies in Latinoamerica and Caribbeans“, starting in September 2024 and continuing through the first half of 2025.

The series is developed in collaboration with Mercociudades, a network of more than 370 cities in Latin America committed to urban resilience and supported by Italian Agency for Development Cooperation. This series is the first project included in a collaborative framework between MUFPP and Mercociudades, which aims to present examples of urban food policies to cities of both networks, to create possibilities of networking and to work as a platform to design new ones. 

The series will be articulated in 7 webinars: the introductory webinar took place on September 4th and one for each of the Milan Pact’s six categories, in between the end of the 2024 and the first half of 2025. The main language is going to be Spanish with simultaneous interpretation in Portuguese, and are open to authorities and technical staff from Mercociudades cities, as well as from MUFPP Latin American cities.

Here’s an overview of the series:

• Introductory webinar – 4 Sep 2024 – 17:00 CEST
• Webinar #1 on the “Governance” category – 22 Oct 2024 – 17:00 CEST
• Webinar #2 on the “Sustainable Diets and Nutrition” category – 4 December 2024
• Webinar #3 on the “Social and Economic Equity” category – TBA
• Webinar #4 on the “Food Production” category – TBA
• Webinar #5 on the “Supply Chain and Distribution” category -TBA
• Webinar #6 on the “Food Waste” category – TBA

The dates and subscription forms will be published here as soon as they become available.

The introductory webinar

The introductory webinar, moderated by the Head of Mercociudades, Jorge Rodriguez, started with the institutional greetings by Maria Auxiliadora Executive Secretary of Mercociudades, São Paulo City Hall, and the MUFPP, followed by a presentation about the Pact by the Filippo Gavazzeni, Head of MUFPP. We had the great pleasure of having Jorge Meza, from FAO Brazil, giving a speech called “The potential of urban food policies in Latinoamerica”. Finally, the two MUFPP leaders for the South American Region, Rosario and Belo Horizonte, spoke about their experiences through the words of Rogelio Biazzi, Chief of Cabinet, Municipality of Rosario, and Chyara Sales Pereira, Deputy Municipal Secretary of Economic Development and Responsible for International Relations, Municipality of Belo Horizonte.

This time, we had the participation of more than 70 people from all over the Latin American Region, below you can watch the recording.

We are pleased to announce that next Tuesday 22nd of October at 17 CEST we are going to have the next webinar of the series having as a theme the Governance category.

WEBINAR #2 — Governance: Intergovernmental Processes and Civil Society Engagement for the Sustainability of Urban Food Systems

On October 22nd, it took place the 2nd webinar of the 7-part series ‘El potencial de las políticas alimentarias urbanas en Latinoamérica’, developed in partnership with Mercociudades. This second webinar regarded focused on the 1st category of the Pact “Governance“, through a theoretical introduction and 3 concrete practices. Jorge Rodriguez, Head of the Mercociudades Secretary opened the webinar which was then moderated by Maria Eugenia Hulten, Food Security and Nutrition Coordination from Rosario, and Darklane Rodrigues Días, Undersecretary of Food Security and Nutrition of SMASAC, from Belo Horizonte.
Filippo Gavazzeni introduced the Pact’s recommended actions about the Governance category as well as providing an overview of helpful workshop tools that can be used by cities and developed throughout the Food Trail project. Then three cities from the MUFPP network presented three good practices, in particular we enjoyed the following presentations:

• ‘Food Sovereignty in an insular context’ – Facundo Armas, Undersecretary of Productive Development – City of Rio Grande (Ar).
• ‘Agrifood Pact of Quito: actors, processes and action plan 2024’ – Pablo Garofalo – In charge of the AGRUPAR project of ConQuito – City of Quito.
• ‘Araraquara Without Hunger’. – Silvani Silva – Food security coordinator, from the Prefeitura de Araraquara, Brazil.

The webinar saw the participation of more than 80 delegates from around Latin-America, re-watch the webinar below or by clicking this link.

WEBINAR #3 — Sustainable Diets and Nutrition: How cities can foster safe and healthy diets through educational activities and school and community meal programmes.

With great pleasure, MUFPP and Mercociudades pre-announce the date of the third webinar of the series “El potencial de las políticas alimentarias urbanas en Latinoamérica” organised in collaboration with Rosario and Belo Horizonte. This webinar is going to unpack the second category of the Pact’s framework “Sustainable Diets and Nutrition”with a presentation of the recommended actions as well as presentation of case studies from our cities. Pre-register at this link.