After his keynote speech at Tropentag 2016, Dr. Poonpipope Kasemsap from Kasetsart University, Thailand had a short discussion with student reporters about his idea of food security and fair use of resources. Dr. Poonpipope Kasemsap stressed that food security will be one of the most urgent issues in the next few decades. Solving this issue requires the constant solidarity and sharing knowledge between the northern and southern globe, from the developed and developing countries. Since humans are the key actors in finding solutions for food security problems, he believes humans are one of the most limited resources that we need to “renew”.

The initiative from the Horticulture Innovation Lab where Dr. Poonpipope Kasemsap is the director is bringing experts and their knowledge to developing countries to improve the situations there. On the other hand, dealing with problems will also enable these experts to enrich the experience and knowledge.

Dr. Poonpipope Kasemsap is also the responsible person for developing the unique master’s degree program “Food Security and Climate Change”, with cooperation between a group of universities from Europe and Asia. The aim of this program is to build a highly qualified human resource to address the issue of food security and climate change in the future.

Prof. Folkard Asch shared with us his impression about how global problems increased the interest in development-oriented research and raised the number of young researchers in agricultural studies.

The chairman of ATSAF expects researchers to be engage in networking and showing their results during Tropentag 2016.

We interviewed Prof. Dr. Bernhard Freyer, head of the department of Organic Farming System at BOKU University, and head of the local organizing committee before the beginning of the opening session. He shared with us the role of Tropentag in the North-South exchange of knowledge and the expected discussion in the several organized workshops and the exceptionally large poster presentation.

Interview to Prof. Freyer

Besides Tropentag 2016, “AgroFoods and Human Values: Toward Sustainable Foodscapes & Landscapes” in 2013, “Perspektiven sozialer und ökonomischer Gerechtigkeit Perspektiven sozialer und ökonomischer Gerechtigkeit - Auf den Spuren eines Wegbereiters: 150 Jahre Rudolf Steiner” in 2011, “Building sustainable rural futures. The added value of systems approaches in times of change and uncertainty / Transdisciplinarity as a framework for integrating science and stakeholders perspectives into development processes” in 2010, and “9. Wissenschaftstagung Ökologischer Landbau” in 2007 are only some of the several conferences he arranged and have been the chairperson of during his career.