Previous symposia, 2013–2019 | Food Systems Symposium Archive

An overview of the annual food systems symposium years and the themes each one emphasised.

The symposium ran annually for most of the 2010s. Each year's organising team chose its own framing, but a few concerns recurred: how to make sustainable food affordable, how law and policy shape what ends up on the plate, and how to connect rural producers with urban eaters.

Year	Emphasis (our summary)
2013	Founding gathering: bridging farm, policy and kitchen perspectives.
2014	Food law as an emerging discipline; local procurement.
2015	Meat, supply chains and connecting consumers to producers — see 2015 programme notes.
2016	Labour, land access and true cost — see 2016 overview.
2017	Climate adaptation and regenerative practice; a call for student proposals.
2018	Grains, regional processing and rebuilding mid-scale infrastructure.
2019	Food justice, community gardens and neighbourhood food economies.

These summaries are reconstructed from public mentions and general knowledge of the field; they are not a complete programme, and individual speakers are not named here unless their talk titles were already widely cited.