Our Activities Around the World

The Thünen Institute has projects and partners in the field of global food supply and resources throughout the world. A look at the world map (August 2017) helps to classify our running research projects with local partner.

  • Against the background of international trade agreements, we are analyzing for Ghana the impact of food imports on the preferences and eating habits of consumers. This is because the growing demand for animal food products – especially in the growing cities of emerging and developing countries presents a challenge for the future.
  • In Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda we work together with national research organizations, ministries of agriculture and other political agencies in order to illustrate their national agricultural markets and their structures with the help of the market model AGMEMOD. Among other things, we are studying how national agricultural policies impact the national agricultural markets. Thus these countries can better estimate which policy measures help to improve the supply of the population with food or help increase the income of farmers.
  • In Zambia, Ecuador and the Philippines, we are studying the contribution of forests to the sustenance of basic life needs of the rural population at the household level. At the state level the interdependencies of forestry and de-forestry models and commercial agriculture, or rather the subsistence economy, are studied. Agro forestry and Non-Wood-Forest Products are also considered here (www.la-foret.org).
  • At the production level, the focus is on cost structures and technologies, for example: How can small farmers produce from their own resources. How can by-products from the production of biodiesel be used as fish feed? How can the rice yield in Burkina Faso be increased? How are the conditions for potato crops in Nigeria?