The SHARE meetings are bi-monthly seminars created, coordinated, and held by doctoral students enrolled in the third cycle of studies in history, archiology and geography of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Minho / Lab2PT. Besides being an opportunity for doctorate students to meet, each session enables a doctoral student to present the progress of their research and receive contributions from their peers.

 

SHARE.ICS Invites Leonardo Aboim Pires | Fresh as lettuce? Food freshness and the historical reality of contemporary Portuguese horticulture

Food can be approached from different perspectives, and one of them focuses on storage conditions. The perishability of animal and agricultural products has been a challenge for public authorities over time and ensuring that people can enjoy them for as long as possible has led to approaches that see storage structures as the most viable solution. Rather than consumer perception, although this is not excluded, public policies on how to guarantee food supply in viable sanitary conditions and food preservation are mandatory, in correlation with scientific academic discussions. It is in this sense that the concept of ‘freshness’ arises as the most functional for examining this issue. Keeping a product fresh has three dimensions: the triumph of technique over the natural order of things; guaranteeing continuous and diversified access to food in quantity and quality and, finally, promoting public health determinants. Integrating these notions into food policies makes it necessary to take a historical look at the evolution of this reality of freshness. This will be the focus of our paper, based on the research carried out as part of our PhD thesis on analyzing agricultural value chains in Portuguese horticulture in the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Biography:

He has a degree in History (2015) and a Master’s in Contemporary History (2018) from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the University of Lisbon. He is currently studying for a PhD in Sustainability Sciences at the Lisbon Institute of Social Sciences, with a thesis entitled “Agricultural dynamics, competitiveness, and the market: horticulture in Portugal (1850-2000)”. He is a member of ReSEED – Rescuing seed’s heritage, a project funded by the European Research Council, and a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Coimbra. He has devoted his research mainly to issues of agriculture, food and the environment between the 18th and 20th centuries.

 

 

+ info: https://shareics.cargo.site/SHARE-Leonardo

 

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