With hundreds of contributions and some prominent figures of international, development-oriented and interdisciplinary research in the line-up (to be announced soon...), the organisers of Tropentag 2011 are aiming to increase the outreach of the conference with a team of 12 Student Reporters. Drawing experience from the success of Tropentag 2010 in Zurich, the ATSAF e.V. with the support of the Robert-Bosch Foundation, the fiat panis Foundation and the Böll Foundation invites students to join the team. Application is open to students affiliated to a European university, with great interest in the Tropentag topics. The applicants should be fluent in English and have basic experience in interviewing, concise writing and knowledge in the use of Web 2.0 social networks. Applicants should send a short CV, outlining their experience in the relevant fields and a motivation letter (maximum ½ page). Please also state which topic of the conference you would be most interested to report: (1) Marginal land and marginal people (2) Development on the margin and nature protection (3) Resource use and ecosystem services (4) Perspective for development on the margin, or (5) keynote presentations.

Food prices are 36% above the levels of a year ago and remain close to the 2008 peak, driven in part by higher fuel costs connected to instability in the Middle East and North Africa. With current double digit food price inflation in crisis-striken Egypt and Syria, a major World Bank report shows wheat, maize and soya costs have soared, requiring a relaxation of grain export controls and a rethink on biofuels. "Already 44 million people have fallen into poverty since June 2010. If the food price index rises by just another 10% we estimate another 10 million people that fall into extreme poverty. And a 30% increase would add 34 million more people to the world's poor, who now number 1,2 billion" said World Bank President Robert Zoellick while presenting the World Bank's Food Price Watch last month. Eager to capitalise on rising food and energy prices or shore-up their own country's food security, foreign investors are pouring in to lease or buy huge tracts of cheap land that governments have cleared of people in the developing world. This high-stakes global land rush is essentialy a third wave of outsourcing and is taking place in the largest recipient countries of humanitarian food and development assistance. From Ethiopia's lowlands to the hilltops of Madagascar, vast tracts of farmland and forests are being gobbled up by foreign investors creating super-sized farms.

A contribution to the Tropentag 2010 received the best article prize, awarded by the editorial board of the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension . Drawing conclusions from case studies in local seed managemnet systems in Bangladesh, the authors critically examined two major styles of participatory video production. The prize recognised the contribution of the authors in the advancement of innovation in rural communication and extension, by providing a solid basis for the effective use of video in innovation and extension processes. Principal author and Student Reporter Team member Ataharul Chowdhury, from Bangladesh, said to the Tropentag blog: "I am looking forward to getting ways and opportunities to further this research along cultural, ethical, and political dimensions that have enormous influence to shape participatory and second generation media”. The article can be openly accessed: Chowdhury, Ataharul Huq , Hambly Odame, Helen and Hauser, Michael (2010) 'With or Without a Script? Comparing Two Styles of Participatory Video on Enhancing Local Seed Innovation System in Bangladesh', The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, 16: 4, 355 — 371.

Tropentag 2011 will have a focus on development on the margin. Watching the images and the video from Japan calls for a re-definition of our perspective on margin. There is no nation more modern and more organised than Japan, nevertheless the thinness of the edge on which modernity lives was revealed in the most striking way. Photo: Yomiuri Shimbun/AFP/Getty Images Photo: Kyodo/Reuters Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Tropentag 2011 will take place at the University of Bonn, Germany on 5 - 7 October 2011. The call for papers and the first conference information is now published on the Tropentag website. Original research abstracts of 250-350 words must be submitted using the online form until the deadline of May 15th, 2011. Young scientists are especially encouraged to submit their contributions. All accepted contributions will be published in the conference proceedings and on the Tropentag homepage. Contributions of an interdisciplinary nature will be preferred for oral presentations.

Reporting from China: A fire has ravaged one of the world's most advanced projects for rainforest restoration projects following the Rainforestation Farming technology, previously presented in Tropentag conferences. The blaze conferred a biological damage of increased significance as many acres of precious forest were burned. An international delegation of researchers and sponsors had to make an emergency evacuation of the site as the fire engulfed the project, designed and implemented by the TianZi Biodiversity Research & Development Center, in collaboration with numerous international partners. Hundreds of local people have been fighting the blaze at the site of the project in the Bulang mountains of Xishuangbanna in the Yunnan Province of China, but they have been unable to prevent a severe loss of bio-culture.

Did you ask yourself... Without access to the 100 million man-hours that have been put into Wikipedia, how much do you actually know? Without your contacts in online social networks how much do you accomplish? Without access to the news, weather, your bank account-- how in charge of your life are you? And did you expect that Facebook could be far more than a senseless medium for "gossip" and entertainment, but also a powerful platform for promoting democratic change? The Internet has transformed what it means to be human, as we are now more connected to one another than ever before. Yet, over 5 billion people don't even know Google exists! Left out without a voice in the global dialog, or the opportunity to share ideas and learn from the Internet's ever-expanding knowledge pool. Did you ever imagine a world, where isolated rural communities harness the power of information to enhance their quality of life and to be on par with their peers in developed urban centres and peoples of this world? And where people get to see real-time what are the implications of urban lifestyle on those areas? We will be always running out of time with reaching the Millenium Development Goals, unless we keep having big ideas. And this is exactly what an international team of young innovators tries to do: Dreaming, guiding, and believing in the vision of a connected planet, they ask you to... Buy a Satellite so you can provide free bandwidth to those who need it most!

The global biodiversity crisis will require the next generation of scientists to be in a better position to safeguard the planet's biocultural diversity. This is particularly relevant for researchers from tropical countries where the potential benefits of knowledge application are greatest. Although the tropics are home to the greatest species diversity and the richest centers of endemism, students and young researchers in developing countries remain under-resourced and find it difficult to access comprehensive textbooks on natural resource conservation. In an effort to make conservation knowledge available as widely as possible, some of the top names in ecology and conservation biology make a major conservation textbook available as a download in a free and open access format. Conservation for All addresses hot topics including balancing conversion and human needs, tropical deforestation, invasive species, climate change and ecosystem functioning by clearly stating the challenges but also offering solutions. Feel free to share this textbook with your colleagues and research partners in the field.