Objectives

The proposed conference represents an academic initiative by the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at Al-Azhar University-Gaza to affirm its scientific role and its responsibility toward the recovery of Gaza’s agricultural and food sectors.

The conference aims to bring together Palestinian and international researchers, academics, professionals, practitioners, policymakers, graduate students, civil society actors, and development partners to present and discuss research related to agriculture, veterinary medicine, food systems, food security, food processing, nutrition, livelihoods, and resilience.

The conference aims to achieve the following objectives:

• To document the systematic targeting and destruction of Gaza’s food system across the full value chain, from input supply to production, processing, distribution, marketing, and consumption.
• To analyze the technical, economic, social, environmental, nutritional, and institutional implications of the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural and food sectors.
• To provide a scientific platform for research on plant production, animal production, veterinary medicine, food processing, food safety, nutrition, agricultural economics, and food-system governance.
• To encourage Palestinian researchers and graduate students to produce evidence-based research on food-system destruction, recovery, and resilience.
• To support Palestinian-led visions for rebuilding Gaza’s food system in ways that strengthen resilience, local capacity, dignity, and food sovereignty.
• To identify food-system practices and modalities that were able to continue functioning during the crisis, including urban agriculture, agroecology, local seeds, low-input production, household food processing, community kitchens, and decentralized food networks.
• To promote scientific collaboration between Palestinian researchers and international scholars, universities, agricultural institutions, veterinary institutions, food-system experts, and development organizations.