Agriculture and forestry

Global warming and the climate change have many negative consequences for the environment and for agriculture. The wine industry has been suffering a lot over the recent years due to extreme weather occurrences like storms and hail. An international team consisting of researchers spanning multiple disciplines and including James Daniell at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is analyzing, which areas are affected most by climate change and how wine cultivation areas may have to change in the future.

Despite great advances in technologies, precise weather forecasts are still very difficult to make. Thus, many researchers rely on computer models. However, these models are built upon specific data sets, which are difficult to come by. In particular agriculture requires exact forecasts and is largely negatively affected by the ongoing climate change.

Half of the total global carbon dioxide stock is stored within the tropical vegetation, which only serves to worsen the consequences of tropical deforestation. Every year approximately 1,000 million metric tons of carbon dioxide are released due to deforestation. However, instead of complete forest removal, oftentimes the forests are fragmented into many smaller forest-areas.

The genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas is one of the most groundbreaking developments for the field of molecular biotechnology throughout the last decades. Researchers worldwide are free to use this tool. However, the economical use is another matter: companies have to acquire licences from the institutes that patented the innovation.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development established a number of agricultural goals regarding eco-friendly economic practices. However, especially the developing world is faced with decreased cost-efficiencies during the implementation of the environmentally-sound production processes. In order to address these issues, 40 ministers, CEOs, high-level representatives of UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations and trade unions, as well as more than 300 sustainable development experts gathered in Berlin.

Forests as a resource and ecosystem offer countless opportunities and possible applications. Unfortunately, oftentimes many of these are not compatible. Therefore it is particularly important to develop intelligent plans and policies in order to protect the forest as an ecosystem and as a home for numerous animal- and plant-species, while simultaneously being used as a sustainable resource.

Agricultural enterprises oftentimes accommodate several hundred cows that all need to be fed and taken care of healthwise.  The healthier the animals, the higher are the yields.

GPS and sensor technology have been a part of agriculture for quite some time now. But not just the cultivation of fields can be simplified by the digitization. Radio chips and the likes are also useful to optimize animal husbandry by monitoring animal health and thus increasing revenue. Last fall a survey by Germany's Digital Association bitkom together with the German Farmers’ Association (DBV) revealed that the majority of farmers are already using or would like to use digital technologies in the near future.

Approximately 100 million people live in Ethiopia, making it the second most densely populated African state south of the Sahara. Over the last two years the “El Niño“ phenomenon has caused the worst drought in decades. The “Welthungerhilfe” estimates that 10 million people are threatened by malnourishment and starvation.