This week we are arriving in Toronto to participate in the XIV World Congress of Rural Sociology. During August 10-14, this inclusive forum will host many international scholars, practitioners and government representatives working across a variety of fields and disciplines.

This international interdisciplinary conference contains a compendium of very interesting agri-food systems related sessions: from new ruralities to agricultural migrant labour; from agri-food movements and resistance to GMOs to water governance; from gender and family analysis of rural contexts to extractive industries in rural communities.

Interestingly, this World Congress will explore empirical, policy-oriented, and theoretical questions related to the complexities and interconnections of the different rural social phenomena existing in unique contexts, which are also globally interdependent. Special attention will be given to understand both the current challenges now experienced by rural people and places, and also the different solutions that are put forward in order to advance towards more sustainable and just rural societies.

We’ll be presenting a paper we have been working on based on our field work in Spain about the everyday forms of resistance to GM expansion in contexts of simultaneous cultivation of GM and non-GM crops.

Follow our tweets from the conference @agri_cultures!