Expo Subthemes

The overarching theme of the exposition-food safety, security, and quality for sustainable development of the planet based on the worth of the individual-comprises a number of subthemes of universal interest:

Expo Milano 2015 intends to address the universal and complex theme of nutrition from an environmental, historical, cultural, anthropological, medical, technical, scientific and economic point of view.

This multidisciplinary approach creates interesting plots, correlations and connections: Expo Milano 2015 aims to address the theme according to a very wide-ranging overview, able to question and stimulate all levels of society, allowing the awareness of the vastness and complexity of the factors that affect each of us to emerge.

To this end, the Bidding Dossier, the general theme of Expo Milano 2015 - Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life - has been divided into the following ub-themes:

1. Science and technology for food safety, security and quality
2. Science and technology for agriculture and biodiversity
3. Innovation in the agro-food supply chain
4. Dietary education
5. Food for better lifestyles
6. Food and culture
7. Cooperation and development on food.

As the interdisciplinary nature of each of the sub-themes and how they interact and complement each other is quite clear, in addressing the development of the sub-themes, it is useful to highlight these interactions, grouping the sub-themes together into three macro-groups. The first focuses on issues of a more technical and scientific nature, paying close attention to production processes and models, as well as market policies and mechanisms to ensure food security and quality. The second group develops the social and cultural relationship between humankind and food. Cooperation and development, the third, represents the compulsory road to be followed by all areas of the agro-food supply chain and their governance: this involves making the imperative of cooperation an imperative for human action as regards food and therefore permeates all the other sub-themes.

In this way, sustainability and innovation represent the main factors of human responsibility: the concept of sustainability must be the rule of thumb that pervades both the processes related to food and the other areas of human development, and innovation is the tool, the mental approach to finding new solutions to problems relating to each sub-theme.

A. Scientific and technological sub-themes

Science and technology for food safety, security and quality
New Production and Trade measures to ensure food security for all (quantity and quality) and sustainable development.

Science and technology for agriculture and biodiversity
Finding a balance between agro-forestry, livestock farming, fishing, fish farming and natural resources, investigating the scientific, technological and ethical issues of sustainable development.

Innovation in the agro-food supply chain
Science, technology, traditional knowledge and new consumer needs for production processes and food products of the future.

Vision
The history of humankind is full of examples that testify to the various ways in which human beings have and still do manipulate nature to get food: techniques and technology have changed the ways of hunting and fishing, breeding, farming, communicating, storing, processing, distributing and consuming food.

At Expo Milano 2015, humankind’s ability to transform nature in order to get food is placed at the centre of the attention of Participants and visitors. Through recounting, displaying and intrpreting the history of civilization and techniques and processing, visitors are able to:

• reflect on the most delicate issues of the relationship between transforming nature and using environmental resources;
• meet institutions, businesses and associations in their efforts to increase the quality, security and abundance of food;
• meet and find out more about the most diverse solutions adopted by humankind to make land fertile and express a symbolic dimension of nature.

The basic theme of this reflection will therefore be sustainability, understood as a balance in the process of food production between natural resources availability and humankind’s production ability.

Comparisons and discussions on actual cases and good practices, exhibition spaces, displays and entertainment will be sources of reflection for visitors on the balancing points of the natural system and the constant challenge to balance growth and sustainability.

Expo Milano 2015 will guide visitors along an adventure-filled path to discover nature’s hidden resources, new ways of interacting with it and the scale, so far unknown, of processes at the starting point of the food path.

The underlying theme of sustainability will also serve as the guide and the plot for analysing all the segments of the agro-food chain: this involves ensuring the quality and sustainability of products at all stages of the process, fair pay for labour, access to markets and the specific nature of various skills.

Expo Milano 2015 will take visitors on a journey through the most varied aspects of the food supply chains to discover an amazing variety of products, means and processes: each of these will demonstrate its relationship with the territories, with the identities from which it arises, with the values that the food communicates as well as with the most advanced processing and distribution systems.

From this starting point, Expo Milano 2015 presents itself as a projection into the future: an appointment where the paths of development and innovative solutions which society’s best energies, the most vibrant and fertile minds of the scientific community are addressing, can cross. “Still to come” spaces will anticipate the visitor experience of visions of the future of food, of new tastes as unpredictable products of the supply chain, new trends as unexpected directions of social practices, new tools as the development of human potential.

Expo Milano 2015 recognizes that innovation plays a strategic role in adapting all the factors revolving around nutrition and identifies within it a specific object of investment in terms of human capital, economic resources and legal framework.

Once again, the prerequisite of the future is sustainability. The representation of possible environmental disasters resulting from the abuse of nature will contribute to greater awareness of human responsibility - and consequently also the responsibility of the individual visitors - in terms of their future choices. The future, therefore, should be imagined with awareness of this human responsibility, in which political decisions, strategy but also the choices of individual citizens play a decisive role.

In these terms, innovation is primarily a strategy. A joint strategy in innovation policy can become the true element of partnership between Countries and between large and small businesses. Development and the capacity for innovation come together and can generate surprising results, more in terms of the ability to sense and support new elements when they appear than in terms of the amount of financial resources.

B. Social/cultural sub-themes

Dietary education
Families, schools and universities, companies, associations and the scientific community working to improve  communication  on proper nutrition and on making conscious choices.

Food for better lifestyles
Relationship between food and health, both in terms of social systems and personal needs, aimed toward complete wellness.

Food and culture
Encounters and dialogues among the various cultural and social identities of the world regarding their food traditions. 

Vision
Human beings, like any animal, experience hunger and thirst. The urge to satisfy that need is the origin of the indomitable creativity of human beings in seeking solutions. There are, nevertheless, still too many areas where the fulfilment of this basic need can not be achieved. Expo Milano 2015 intends to raise awareness of the need for a proper, healthy diet in terms of both quality and quantity, and the need to ensure that humankind’s demand for food is fully met, while respecting the dignity of individuals and the natural system to which they belong.

In this context, dietary education is presented on one hand as a tool for raising self-awareness and understanding of our own physiology and the sum of our needs. On the other, education raises awareness of the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the experience of food, what happens when there is not enough of it, what it means and what its traditions are.

In these terms, attention should be paid to the links between nutrition, physical activities and health to prevent the phenomenon of overeating and unbalanced diets which, together with unhealthy lifestyles, can cause serious damage to human health.

Starting from an increased focus on agricultural systems, but then also on food processing and distribution in all its dimensions, especially industrial ones, Expo Milano 2015 intends to draw attention to the specific professional skills necessary to best meet the challenges involving hunger and malnutrition on one hand, and overeating or poor eating habits on the other.

Dietary education and education in general thus become a veritable mission for Expo Milano 2015, in line with the BIE statute, aiming to raise visitors’ awareness of their nature, their needs and systems in place to provide answers.

Unhealthy lifestyles and behaviour, such as the abuse of food or artificial substances, can cause serious damage to human health. Education about more harmonious lifestyles and consumption models which are better balanced to meet our actual needs thus become a declination of the educational mission of Expo Milano 2015.

The experience of satisfying needs then also becomes a pleasure: the great world table that is Expo Milano 2015 is a unique, one-off opportunity to experience the pleasure of food with delicacies, knowledge and tastes on offer that are normally unavailable.

Dietary education reveals another important dimension of food, which is reflected in its links with cultures and identities: humankind also expresses itself through food.

The dinner table, canteens, banquets and meals shared together show moments of human relationships on which society is based and through which traditions are maintained and communities strengthened.

Food, cooked and shared, also becomes the symbol of and vehicle for metaphorical meanings, intangible messages, ineffable memories, high ideals. The history of culture is in turn a great table, sumptuously laid with countless, precious dishes made available to the individual, always in search of something, starting from his hunger and thirst.

Visitors to Expo Milano 2015 will be able to find out how, behind every food tradition, there lurks a history, a story, a myth that speaks of peoples, of lands, of places.

Shows and events will extend the form of food for visitors to Expo Milano 2015: they will be refreshment points on the journey of discovery, shelters for the soul, amphitheatres of representation and narration.

But art and culture are also dimensions in which the phenomenon of hunger, malnutrition or food wastage and abuse can become effective representations of condemnation, of inevitable questions, of incitements to act. Through cultural representations, Expo Milano 2015 also aims to promote a culture of cooperation to face the great food challenges and deal with the significant imbalances characterizing global society.

C. Cooperation and development

Cooperation and development on food
Development of methods and instruments for partnership cooperation, respective of the roles and characteristics of the various players and attentive to all innovation processes. 

Vision
Developing methods and tools for cooperation from a partnership pointof view, respecting the roles and distinctive characteristics of the various players and taking into account all the innovation processes.

Expo Milano 2015 wants to make a contribution to fighting hunger and thirst – one of the great goals among the United Nations Millennium Goals - with an effort to share perspectives and solutions. A contribution based mainly on showcasing positive cases, success stories, effective models.

Food security, understood as universal access to healthy, good and culturally-appropriate food, becomes the central theme of this reflection: finding a balance between all the economic, social and environmental

dimensions of the food production and distribution process that can fully meet the food demand of human beings.

The great stage of Expo Milano 2015 will invite all stakeholders to tell their story, to be discovered, to suggest opportunities for cooperation and innovation, to exhibit their best results: from national and local Governments to non-governmental organizations, to research institutes, from rural communities to large farmers, from the system of craft businesses to large industry entities, from the most complex players in distribution to small-scale retailers.

Expo Milano 2015 will focus on the role that innovative, conscious, responsible choices play in the fight towards underdevelopment. The richness and variety of the debate on new forms of support for sustainable development will act as the starting point for the Centro per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile-CSS (Centre for Sustainable Development) the true legacy of the Exhibition.