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Review of Open Lecture with Louise O. Fresco

Neither Fish nor Flesh

Louise O. Fresco speaking at the ESMT Open Lecture

"Please think of me when you shop in a supermarket the next time!" With this Louise O. Fresco, professor at the University of Amsterdam, ended her Open Lecture at ESMT on November 24, 2010 after the long applause had come to an end. Her presentation “Neither fish nor flesh” took the audience of around 60 from ethnological to historical and then to traditional reasons for today’s nutrition. People have always eaten flesh. But do we really need as much meat as we consume in our western world today? Or would a little less do? Religions have always applied rules on the consumption of food, but never has there been a time in which food was more readily available than today. So Louise Fresco encouraged the audience to limit food consumption a little and to be aware of the implications of food production.

The moderator Claudius Seidl, Chief Editor of the Feuilleton of Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, led the audience through the vast variety of topics in the discussion that succeeded the presentation. The lively discussion on campus at ESMT mirrored the discussion taking place in Germany at the moment.

In his introduction to the day’s lecture, ESMT’s dean Wulff Plinke drew the connection between nutrition and management, citing a article by Bloomberg Businessweek from the beginning of the year: “Congo’s mineral-rich Katanga province (government) asked mining companies operating there to plant at least 500 hectares of corn to feed workers and help reduce imports of the grain.” The government of Congo linked the license to operate for mining companies to the production of corn. By asking to feed the workers with grain and to plant it (not to import it), the government directly decided on the usage of the land.

About Louise O. Fresco

Louise Fresco obtained her PhD in tropical agronomy at Wageningen and became full professor and chair of the Wageningen department of agronomy in 1991. She was a member of several boards and evaluation teams of the centers of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research. She notably promoted the West African Rice Development Association's (WARDA) innovative research on indigenous rice varieties which led to a major breakthrough (Nerica rice). From 1997 until 2006 she worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN in Rome. There she was Assistant Director General, Agriculture Department (FAO).

Today she is professor at the University of Amsterdam. In 2007 she became also visiting professor at Stanford University. She was appointed as a so called independent Crown member of the Dutch Socio Economic Council, the leading advisory body uniting employers’ organizations and trade unions in the country. 

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