Michael Kreuzer, Professor for Animal Nutrition at the ETH Zurich and Vice-President of the North-South Centre, delivered the opening speech “About the World Food System” of this year's Tropentag. Being held for the first time outside Germany, the Tropentag just beat the records: There are 1.228 registrations from a total of 83 countries, more than 1.100 abstracts were submitted, of which 522 were accepted for presentation, and there will be 130 oral presentations and almost 400 poster presentations. Thus, it promises to be a very diverse, multi-faceted and interesting conference! The World Food System is a major area of research of the North South Centre of the ETH Zurich. Founded in 2007 from its predecessor, the Centre of International Agriculture (ZIL), the North South Centre brings together various academic disciplines, ranging from agricultural sciences and information technology, to environmental studies and social sciences, thus offering an interdisciplinary approach for analyzing the World Food System.