Tropentag 2019 - Student blog - Science Forium 2013

Beyond the Ivory Tower

Philipp Gassner — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:34:14 +0000

Simon Chater, Director of Green Ink in an interview about the importance of communication at the Science Forum and beyond. Interview: Read more on 'Sustainability Science beyond the Ivory Tower'

It should be a women’s world?

Kirstin Ohlendorf — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:52:16 +0000

The presentation Agricultural pathways to improved nutrition: getting the policies right by Prabhu Pingali focused on the creation of a policy environment which supports the Agriculture - Nutrition Nexus – instead of the current Agriculture versus Nutrition Silos!

Stage Diving at the Closing Session

Philipp Gassner — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:14:28 +0000

'I’ve learned more than I have contributed', Linxiu Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences nicely summarized before handing over to Ken Cassman, the ISPC Chair. Cassman didn’t intend to stage dive when he asked the about 150 participants of the Science Forum Closing Session to raise their hands. But the show of hands indicated the people present from both disciplines, agriculture and nutrition, whom the conference –quite successfully- aimed to bring to getter. And out of their ‘silos’. Read more

Two Sexes Are Quite Inadequate

Philipp Gassner — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 08:50:57 +0000

‘It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?’ Virginia Woolf is quite right, as was reflected in Breakout Session 7, exploring links between nutrition, health and the female domains of subsistence farming. In the latter, inequality persists in unequal opportunities, low representation of women in leadership and in continuing violence against women in all its forms. Two out of three illiterate adults are women. Every 90 seconds, a woman dies in pregnancy. And even though the figure of women accounting for 80% of agricultural production, while owning less than 2% of land, is now contested, women clearly contribute to agriculture and nutrition quite differently than men. Obviously, 'The playing field needs to be leveled'. Read more

The motion for lunch is rejected

Philipp Gassner — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 12:31:15 +0000

‘The motion for lunch is rejected’, ruled Joachim Von Braun of the University of Bonn wittily, when chairing the first plenary session at the Science Forum 2013. He rather carried on with the session, setting the scene of the Forum and pointing out, why sufficient lunch is also still rejected to 925 million people world wide. To answer why 15% of the world’s population suffer from undernourishment after decades of agricultural research is indeed a tough one. The vast amount of knowledge gathered during this time was obviously not enough. At the same time ‘We don’t need to know everything’, Von Braun pointed out. What we really have to know, keynote speaker Patrick Webb from Tufts University sketched - to provide everybody with the lunch they deserve. Read more A healthy lunch @ Science Forum