Freie Universität Berlin maintains a worldwide network of liaison offices. With their regional expertise and local networks, the 5 Liaison Offices (Beijing, Cairo, Moscow, New Delhi and São Paulo) provide support in establishing and supporting collaborations with scholars from their respective regions and FU Berlin. The idea of this new web talk series “At the Crossroads of Global Research!” is to create a platform for scholars and the public to discuss common experiences, best practices to examine possible channels of cooperation and to initiate a successful collaboration between the participating scholars and institutions with Freie Universität being the nucleus of such a collaboration.

The second event of the „Crossroads” series will take place on Tuesday, October 5^th 2021 at 13:00 CEST and the topic will be „The Effects of Covid-19 on Food Security: Challenges and Opportunities for Transforming Food Systems”. Prof. Dr. Renata Motta (FU Berlin-LAI) will moderate the discussion between Dr. Marco Antônio Teixeira (FU Berlin-Food for Justice), Dr. Malancha Chakrabarty (Observer Research Foundation) and Dr. Racha Ramadan (Cairo University-FEPS).

The Covid-19 pandemic presents a crisis that reveals connections between climate change, environmental degradation and the global food system. Concerns about its impacts on food security have been present since its beginning. In a report released in June 2020, the United Nations (UN) estimated that more than 130 million people worldwide could be facing insecurity regarding food by the end of the year. Among producers, there were fears about harvest loss, disruption of food trade and closure of local markets. After one and a half years of experience of living in pandemic times, what is the scientific evidence on its effects on food security? This debate aims to exchange experiences across the globe from an interdisciplinary perspective about the pandemic and food.