Dena Leibman is Head of Outreach at IFPRI

At turns seeming like an inspiring TED talk, policy seminar, industry trade show, research conference, and youth-centric social media event, the Chicago Council’s Food Security Symposium succeeded in its goal to showcase the power of these actors to work individually and together to end poverty and hunger around the world.

All speakers conveyed a common urgency: how to feed a growing population with ever scarcer land, water, and energy. While specific solutions might have varied, all agreed that a go-it-alone approach wasn’t sufficient to make the impact necessary to end hunger and malnutrition. Chicago Council’s Catherine Bertini (formerly Executive Director of the World Food Programme) tweeted: “Today’s challenges are much more complex and require a full range of expertise”—and that varied expertise was front and center at the symposium.

I’ll refrain from re-writing the conference highlights here, since the Chicago Council and its partners did an excellent job of engaging live bloggers and tracking twitter feeds, in which IFPRI participated. In fact, three screens at the event captured the twitter buzz, and tracked conference highlights.

To see what the attendees, including IFPRI, took away from the event, check out:

• Chicago Council twitter feed and Facebook page
• Global Food for Thought blog, authored by staff from partner organizations, including the Food Tank and InterAction, IFPRI, Abbott Nutrition, DuPont/Pioneer, and others
• IFPRI’s Director General Shenggen Fan’s commentary on the Chicago Council blog
• HarvestPlus Director Howarth Bouis’s commentary on the Chicago Council blog