The OpenAg Symposium 2023

Beyond Resilience – Interventions to Deliver Lasting Change in Rural Societies   

Farming societies in the developing world often take a reactive stance in the face of systemic shocks whether that be the management of pests, diseases, and/or extreme climate events. Reactive interventions do not generally reduce risks or withstand unforeseen disruption associated with systemic shocks, or improve adaptive capacity. A success criterion which simply maintains the status quo by preventing systemic volatility will be incapable of delivering transformative, lasting change. 

OpenAg 2023 aims to explore how we can move beyond resilience (i.e. simply getting back to a steady state post-shock) and instead shape the future of agricultural communities in the developing world by designing, building and delivering interventions that can improve adaptive capacity and advance critical needs and aspirations. This is the question that the third iteration of the OpenAg Symposium: Food Futures in a Changing Climate, will set out to address.  

The half-day conference on October 6, 2023, will examine examples at the intersection of critical development topics where proactive measures to redefine resilience have been designed also to deliver broader advances for agricultural and rural communities. Taken together and separately, discussions will consider how food security, migration and livelihoods, healthcare and nutrition, resource allocation decisions and government policy can be better aligned for development beyond resilience.