Dr Ian Robinson on food and water security

The David Davies Memorial Institute was pleased to welcome Dr Ian Robinson to the Department of International Politics. Ian was the third speaker of the DDMI's scholar / practitioner speaker series. He gave an informal presentation on food security from his practitioner experience, followed by Q & A.

Ian’s talk was entitled “Grassroots perspectives on food and water security in Africa and Asia: the experiences of an agricultural adviser.” The talk took place in the Main Hall of the International Politics Building on Monday 12 March. Full biographical details of Ian are below. 

To take full advantage of this opportunity, students especially were invited to think beforehand about questions relating to the work of food security practitioners who literally are in the field. Ian is uniquely experienced and knowledgeable, having worked on food and water security in over 70 countries on 200+ missions during the last 40 years. 

 

Ian Robinson bio:

Ian is Director of AA International Ltd. an Aberystwyth-based commercial consultancy organisation. Ian has worked on food security problems in about 70 developing countries over the last 40 years. Ian has been involved in 200-300 missions, including leading about 60 UN Crop and Food Supply/ Security Assessments.  These missions have been in places as diverse as Outer Mongolia, the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. His work has involved places actually undergoing conflict (South Sudan / Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Somalia etc.), and countries that have moved to a post-conflict situation (Mozambique, Kosovo, Serbia, Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan/ South Sudan, and Somaliland etc). Most recently, he has conducted various EU Food Facility evaluation missions to look at price hikes.

Dr Robinson has experience working with government ministries, the World Bank, EU bodies, bilateral government agencies (e.g. ODA which is now DFID), and NGOs.  Tasks on which he has advised cover all aspects of agriculture, ranging from training to extension to production. Before setting up AAInternational Ian served as Director of the Centre for Arid Zone Studies (1993-2005) at the University of Wales, Bangor. The CAZS is currently known as the Centre for Advanced Research in International Agricultural Development. Dr Robinson welcomes questions on any area of his work, in addition to questions / comments relating to his presentation.