Current Affairs

On 21.01.2025, our department was invited by our partners at BASF to visit their global headquarters of the company’s Agricultural Solutions division. We were presented the step-by-step process of developing plant protection products, from the laboratory, through greenhouses, all the way to test fields. Afterwards, we visited the company's visitor center and took a factory tour of the Ludwigshafen site, the largest of its kind in the world. During the excursion, we gained many new insights into the company and were able to discuss a variety of current topics related to global nutrition and food security.

On Tuesday 18 June 2024, Dr. Kirsten Boysen-Urban presented the results of a study on "Welchen Beitrag können die „Farm to Fork“ - Strategie und die neu ausgerichtete gemeinsame Agrarpolitik zur Abfederung multipler Schocks leisten? / Impact of the Farm to Fork strategy and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy on the ability of the food system to cushion against multiple shocks" conducted together with Dr Ole Boysen from University College Dublin at the Edmund Rehwinkel Symposium in Berlin. The study was funded by the Edmund Rehwinkel Foundation, together with 4 other studies that responded to the call for proposals on “Building resilience and change - what are the strategies for the agricultural sector and policy makers?”

The event, chaired by Matthias Schulze Steinmann, editor-in-chief of the magazine “top agrar”, was attended by around 100 participants from academia, politics, associations and house banks.

Dr. Dorothee Flaig and Dr. Kirsten Boysen-Urban attended the launch of StEPPFoS taking place from February 15 to 16 in Tema, Ghana.

The African Union (AU) and the European Commission (EC) launched the Strengthening Evidence-Based Policy Practice for Sustainable Food Systems under the AU-EU Partnership (StEPPFoS), which aims to promote policy coherence and alignment across the Pan-African Network for economic Analysis of Policies (PANAP) and for Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FNSSA) to help minimise the fragmentation of agri-food policy initiatives at national and regional levels.

The project is funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe funding programme for 2024-2027 and coordinated by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

The Department for International Agricultural Trade and Food Security of the University of Hohenheim is involved in the StEPPFoS project in Work packages assessing the barriers and facilitators of policy – research interaction, capacity building in Computable General Equilibrium Modelling and Analysis and Scenario Development for Food System Transformation.

The Department of International Agricultural Trade and Food Security (490b) of the University of Hohenheim will participate in the StEPPFoS project together with seventeen other research institutes and organisations in Europe and Africa. Dr Dorothee Flaig and Dr Kirsten Boysen-Urban (490b) lead/co-lead three work packages and several activities such as assessing barriers and facilitators of policy-research interaction, providing capacity building in computable general equilibrium modelling and analysis, supporting policy impact assessments and developing scenarios for food system transformation in Africa.

Learn about Local Content Requirements in: Ing, L.Y., & Grossman, G. (Eds.). (2023). Local Content Requirements: Promises and Pitfalls (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003415794 (open access available!)

Chapter 2 by  Dorothee Flaig, Susan F. Stone describe evolvement, current trends and how LCRs impact the economy.

Hands-on Training in Maldives Using MIRO Interface Completed

Great reunion of current and alumni Hohenheim researchers at the 26th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis in Bordeaux.