Blogging, tweeting, flickring, facebooking, youtubeing, photographing, videoing, interviewing… Four days, 54 blog entries, 300 pictures (approx. 3000 raw pictures equaling to 10 GB of hard-disk space), 7300 page views, 4500 unique page views, 905 absolute unique blog visitors at a bounce rate of 30%... The Student Reporters washed their post-Tropentag-2010 depression down with a few liters of beer, overlooking the Uetliberg and the city of Zurich. We would like to thank all the participants for the cheers, the smiles, the good moods and the hopeful vibes you gave to our reports. From our side, we hope that we helped you to make your meaningful work known to those that didn’t have the chance to attend this year’s conference. We worked hard during the last three days. This is what we are expecting from you too. You are the ones that have to take care of the future. And for this, we wish you, well... GOOD LUCK! We do hope that the Tropentag Student Reporter is here to stay as an institution. We are proud to be the first ones! Take good care of yourselves and see you in Tropentag 2011 in Bonn. This blog is now yours! Keep it going, keep it awake and keep it real! Prost to you all! Oral Beer Session I

The opinions of young professionals such as Ph.D. students were very positive around the Tropentag conference. Tropentag accommodates a diversity of disciplines, themes, cultures, and geographical territories and as such it has grown as a major European platform to cater development. Watch and listen to student voices..

Over a glass of wine and around a table is where bonds are usually established and ideas are born. The Canteen of the University of Zurich hosted the conference dinner of Tropentag 2010. After a full day of intensive discussions on the future of agriculture, food and nutrition, climate change and natural resources participants were able to enjoy a relaxing moment of interacting and networking. Yet another typical “Mensa-Food”: queues of people with trays on hand, three menus of Swiss beef with vegetables, a mushroom curry over couscous and an Asian Wok, all-year-round-salad and 3-CHF-beer marked this Tropentag’s culinary gathering. Food is what links us in Agricultural Sciences. The food we eat, how we eat it and where we source it from has an apparent effect on the ecosystems, the economies and culture somewhere in the world. A future challenge in combating world hunger, promoting food and nutrition security and food justice is to uphold some basic ethical principles of sustainability and implement them into science, education, agriculture, politics, industry, society as well as into our own eating habits. Whether it is in our personal lives or in our university canteens. Or is it something that can be forgotten over a glass of Calvados on the banks of Limmat?

A junior researcher commented on 14 th September, 'I wanted to participate in a conference in Mexico, but I could not. It was costly. I found the Tropentag is more cheaper for a student to participate'. Actually Tropentag has more to offer for young professionals. Watch and listen to the human resources department of GTZ, how as a development agency they like to use this event to search for potential young professionals.

Although early in the morning, the headlines attracted many participants. Padruot Fried from the Swiss Forum for international Agricultural Research (SFIAR) gently led trough the headlines: Public support from SDC Yves Guinand from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) highlighted the contribution from the Swiss Confederation with respect to food security. Swiss Research Institutions Prof. Bernard Lehmann, dean of the department of Food- and Agriculture (D-AGRL) at ETH Zurich, Fritz Schneider from the Swiss college of Agriculture (SHL), Markus Giger from the Centre of Development and environment of University of Berne (CDE) and the National Centre of Competence in Research North-South (NCCR North-South) and Urs Niggli from the Swiss research institution for organic agriculture (FiBL) then outlined the available resources and the strategies in addressing the particular research interests respectively. Private Initiatives Hans Jöhr from the Nestlé Company was glad to present a sample of different sustainable agriculture initiatives from different emerging countries. SFIAR award ceremony

Yesterday, Prof. Dr. Michael Kreuzer of North-South Center opened Tropentag 2010 with a speech “About World Food System” together with 1,228 registrants from 83 countries. This was immediately followed by interesting and thought provoking speeches by experts such as Christian Nelleman from UNEP entitled “Ensuring food security while safeguarding the environment” where he said, “while agriculture surely has impacts on the environment, but more important to understand is how the environment provides the platform for food production”. Moreover, Jimmy Smith of World Bank Institute delivered his speech entitled “The role of livestock for the world food system” indicating that “problem is the availability and accessibility of those foods in developing countries as feeding people does not necessarily nourishing them”. Right after the break, Foundation Fiat Panis awarded 3 recent graduates with Hans H. Ruthernberg-Graduate-Award together with 3 research professionals with Josef G. Knoll-European Science-Award as they managed to produce excellent scientific work meant to contribute to the reduction of hunger in developing countries. The keynote programme was then continued by Paul Collier of Oxford University with his speech entitled “How to feed the bottom billion?” which actually inciting an out-of-comfort-zone discussion pushing for a more pragmatic approach in solving the big question, as his title proposed.

During the Tropentag conference there will be 12 active student reporters running around, blogging, tweeting and taking pictures and video. They will introduce themselves to you below. Do not hesitate to approach them about interesting topics or if you want to share your thoughts or give feedback about the conference! We would also like to encourage you to comment on our blogs, tweets and facebook posts. If you like you can join the twitter conversation as well: just add #tropentag to your tweet!

We actively upload and post content on several websites, including Youtube, Flickr, and Twitter. Also be sure to visit the ETH Multimedia Portal for accessing all keynote presentations. Check it out!