How can improving farmer health and wellbeing enhance resilience?
Last Friday, I was honoured to address the third annual OpenAg Symposium: Food Futures in a Changing Climate, held at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. Organised and hosted by the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and Somerville College Oxford, in partnership with UPL Global, one of the leading suppliers of sustainable agriculture products and solutions.
With opening remarks by The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, Commonwealth Secretary-General and a keynote address by Helen Browning OBE, the symposium engaged the meaning of resilience across agricultural stakeholders. Joining Dr. Shobhana Nagraj, Post-doctoral Clinical Researcher in the Health Systems Collaborative group at the NDM Centre for Global Health Research, Dr. Kate Lamont, Senior Lecturer in Veterinary & Animal Science at the Centre for Epidemiology & Planetary Health, and Duncan Williamson, Global Strategic Lead for Food Systems at Forum for the Future, our panel specifically focused on enhancing resilience to improve farmer health and wellbeing.
Presenting to a diverse group of academia, policy, industry, and NGO leaders in the Rhodes Auditorium, I highlighted the inextricable link between climate change, poverty and health, we considered a whole-systems approach to improve farmer wellbeing, from climate-sensitive health risks, their exposure pathways, and vulnerability factors, to the importance of enhancing the adaptive capacity and resilience of health and agricultural systems.
Looking ahead to COP28 and Health Day, it is vital to explore the context-specific needs and priorities of rural communities, and interventions which will deliver lasting change in agriculture, with an examination of how policy reform can promote resilient, sustainable farming, alongside farmer and societal welfare.
I deeply appreciate Mr. Jai Shroff, Chairman & Group CEO of UPL, Mr. Vikram Shroff, Vice-Chairman & Co-CEO of UPL, and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, Principal of Somerville College, for their kind invitation; Farmer health and resilience are the roots of a flourishing future!
