The next World Expo, to take place in Milan in 2015, will attempt to educate people about different ways of producing food and contribute to the food security debate both in industrialized countries and the developing world, the event’s organizer said.

 

20 million visitors are expected to attend the event, Expo Milano 2015, which will take place in the northern Italian city between 1 May and 31 October.

 

The 142 countries that are signed up to the event will present pavilions showcasing their national cuisine or techniques for producing food, either through traditional farming or technological innovations. A number of companies are supporting the event, whose theme is ‘Feeding the planet - Energy for life’.

 

Beyond the ‘pleasure of eating’, the food security theme is considered particularly important among policymakers, especially as the UN Millennium Development Goals are due to expire in 2015. The first of the goals, which were set in 2000, was the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, which the world is expected to fail. Hunger and poor nutrition are also expected to increase as the world’s population grows to a predicted 9.6 billion by 2050.

 

Part of the exhibition's aim is to showcase alternative ways of producing food. This may be especially important in many parts of Africa, where the dryness of the soil can limit productivity.

 

Some stalls at the event are expected to focus on the merits of small-scale, traditional farming and genetic modification.

 

The EU’s participation in the event may focus on wheat and bread as a “fundamental element of food in EU civilizations”, said David Wilkinson, the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s director of scientific policy.

 

However, for Europe the focus is not so much on producing enough food as on tackling the large amount of it that is wasted. Roughly one third of global food is discarded, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.