ZEF institute in Bonn fosters two main concepts: International cooperation for development, and interdisciplinarity as the way to face challenges.
Today, the idea that industrialized countries and developing countries can help each other on the same level, as real cooperation, is mostly important because in the same way that developing countries slowly become industrialized and start getting the pros and the cons of this condition, industrialized countries start looking more and more like developing countries. As climate change goes on, along with food and energy crisis, migration, and religious and political turmoil, the wealthiest countries will experience problems that developing ones have faced since industrial revolution. On top of that, we all have a common denominator: we need food, and we need it everyday. No matter how sophisticated we think we are, our lives still revolve around getting the daily bread.
Today, the idea that industrialized countries and developing countries can help each other on the same level, as real cooperation, is mostly important because in the same way that developing countries slowly become industrialized and start getting the pros and the cons of this condition, industrialized countries start looking more and more like developing countries. As climate change goes on, along with food and energy crisis, migration, and religious and political turmoil, the wealthiest countries will experience problems that developing ones have faced since industrial revolution. On top of that, we all have a common denominator: we need food, and we need it everyday. No matter how sophisticated we think we are, our lives still revolve around getting the daily bread.
Industrial philosophy about food states that the planetary offer has to meet the human demand: quality standards and all-season availability must be there no matter the consequences. This way of thinking is good as long as it doesn't mean stripping the soils off their biodiversity, exploiting farmers or taking their farms away in the name of a higher efficiency, or wasting one tenth of the food because it doesn't meet the standards or because of manipulation ignorance.
Developing countries philosophy on food, on the other hand, adjusts demand to whatever is available. This conservative thinking is also good as long as it doesn't bring undernourished children, famines, and misused lands and work force.
Each one of these philosophies on its own has no future. The only way we can achieve food security for everyone on the planet is to take a set of solutions lying somewhere in between these two. Production and efficiency have to increase, but demands from the most privileged sectors will have to be reduced.
It is not the amount of food produced currently what concerns us (actually we produce more than we are consuming). The main problem with food is the same main problem with water: it is a matter of transport and distribution. Here is where interdisciplinarity comes into play: Natural sciences must find better ways to produce food while respecting ecosystems in order to counteract weather extreme events; social sciences must understand the behavior of people and introduce new ideas to communities about eating local, wasting less food, and respecting and empowering small farmers in the markets; and last but no least, economics has the huge task of taking food, seen now as a commodity that follows market rules and hence the money, and turning it into a right for all the people.
