2022-02-01

Pettenkofer - The Father of Urban Hygiene

Munich owes its sewage system to him and the world owes modern scientific hygiene to him: Max von Pettenkofer prevailed against much resistance. He was a researcher and pharmacist, and when he was then able to prove in 1850 that cholera could be significantly contained by a functioning sewage system, he was allowed to build Munich's sewer system. To this day, around 230 kilometers of Munich's 2,500-kilometer sewer network still date from Pettenkofer's time.

2021-11-01

Less Traffic and Waste Through Smart Cities in Egypt

With its estimated 20 million inhabitants, Cairo is bursting at the seams. A "smart city" is now being built in the east of Egypt's capital to relieve the pressure on Cairo's center and thereby reduce everyday environmental pollution.

2021-09-30

The Future of Food - Between Wish and Reality - Digitalization in the Food Industry

In about ten years, around 80 percent of our food will be consumed in cities. This calls for completely new solutions in production close to the consumer, in logistics, but also in the redefinition of familiar terms, such as "regional production" or "organic cultivation". And it presents us with challenges to be tackled in terms of waste disposal.

2020-09-28

Science Week Podcast with Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein is online

The first #allweknow Expert Talk Podcast of the Berlin Science Week with Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein is online.

What will the food of the future look like? What role will the megacities play? And how can we create a future where everyone has enough to eat?


Watch the podcast on Youtube.

2020-07-14

Commentary: The SAMs Report “Towards a Sustainable Food System” bites the hand that feeds us!

One of the great challenges at the moment is the governance of our food systems. The European Commission launched the "Farm to Fork Strategy“ which is at the heart of the European Green Deal. The SAMs Report “Towards a Sustainable Food System” played an important role for that strategy.

Justus H.H. Wesseler,  Professor and Chair Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands and his colleague Professor Kai P. Purnhagen, Professor and Chair for Food Law, University of Bayreuth, and Co-Director of the Institute for Food law, wrote a critical comment on the SAMs Report “Towards a Sustainable Food System” in the European Law Blog.

They claim its proposed impact on the food system and its potential for implementation is running short and that the recommendations undermine the freedom of EU citizens, which includes the individual freedom to choose the food they like and the meaning they attach. With their propositions, the autors of the SAMs Report risk the imposition of a single food standard on EU citizens, while neutralising a major characteristic of Europe: its rich cultural diversity of food.

2020-07-02

KitchenTown – A new home for food innovation in Berlin

KitchenTown is the new coworking space for food start-ups near Alexanderplatz in Berlin, including Maker Space, an area with fully equipped professional kitchens for product development.

2020-06-01

Tesvolt Press Release: Tesvolt Pover Storage reduces energy cost in fish farming

Wittenberg, 12 November 2019 The Norwegian fish farming company Kvarøy is using a Tesvolt bulk storage tank on its salmon farm off the island of Selsøyvær in the North Sea. On the floating work platform, the lithium batteries with a total storage capacity of 158 kilowatt hours (kW) reduce the operating time of the diesel generators from 24 to only three hours a day. When rearing a generation of salmon, which takes about 18 months, the company thus saves between 150,000 and 200,000 euros and reduces CO2 emissions. The battery system was developed, supplied and installed by the German commercial storage manufacturer Tesvolt together with its Norwegian partner company Kverneland Energi to meet the individual requirements on the fish farm. 

Picture: Tesvolt

2020-05-27

Video message from the Head and Founder of the Global Food Summit, Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein

We are currently experiencing challenging, but also exciting times in which new concepts and ideas are emerging.
Watch the video message of the Head and Founder of the Global Food Summit, Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein on food innovations, the Berlin Science Week and the Global Food Summit 2021.

2020-04-28

Interview with Stefan Genth, General Manager of the German Retail Association

The reactions to the Covid-19 epidemic have put our economic life under severe pressure and highlighted strengths and weaknesses. Trade has been particularly hard hit. We asked Stefan Genth, General Manager of the German Retail Association, about the current situation and his assessments for the future.

2020-04-28

When acoustic waves freeze food

Some foods can be wonderfully deep-frozen - many types of vegetables or rolls of all kinds, for example. Others, however, are very sensitive, because after defrosting they do not look and taste as good as they used to. However, there is a method that can solve these problems: Acoustic Extra Freezing (AEF).

Picture: AEF Deutschland GmbH

2019-12-12

Interview with Michael Schinharl, operations manager of the restaurant brenner in Munich

The brenner Restaurant is an institution in Munich. It has been open since 2003 and is located in the columned hall of the Marstall, the former horse stable of the Residenz. The pleasant and historical atmosphere will give our dinner a special touch and mark the end of our first conference day.

We talked to our host Michael Schinharl about the influence of food innovations on gastronomy.

2019-10-24

Deutschlandfunk interview with Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein

Agriculture and climate change
The food of the future from the city

Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein, Head and Founder of the Global Food Summit, spoke with Jantje Hannover of Deutschlandfunk about "The food of the future from the city". For him, the core challenge is obvious, because between nine and ten billion people will live on earth in 2050, 75 percent of them in cities; and 80 percent of the food will be consumed in cities.

Prof. Chrsitan Ulrichs, a biologist and specialist in urban horticulture who works closely with the Global Food Summit, was also interviewed. He talks about new cultivation methods in the cities. 

2019-10-02

Developing Agriculture to City Production | Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein in the "Deutsche Bauern Korrespondenz" (German Farmers)

Although a tomato will always remain a tomato, says author Becker-Sonnenschein, production methods and facilities change breathtakingly fast. Many vegetable varieties are now city plants in digitally controlled indoor farming.

2019-09-21

Essay in the online magazine Novo: Will the future of agriculture take place in the cities?

Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein has published an essay in the online magazine Novo about "the urban future of agriculture", examining whether the innovative agricultural sector of the future will take place in cities rather than in rural areas.

2019-09-04

Food Communication Trends: #GFS20: Communication and acceptance of food innovations in societies

We are giving a voice to the future of food - and of course it is particularly interesting to see how the topics of the Global Food Summit are being communicated. 

We are therefore very pleased that our media partner Ubermetrics will follow and analyse the public communication around the topics of the congress over the next couple of weeks and will regularly publish guest articles about those topics in our newsletter.

To kick off this series, Ubermetrics has analysed the German- and English-speaking communication around the topics of the Global Food Summit - "Artificial Intelligence and Urban Circular Food Economy" - for a period of two months (July 2019 - August 2019) and also looked at a first practical example: robotic bees.

2019-09-03

Interview with Dr. MatÄ›j Karásek, Guest Researcher at the Faculty of Airspace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)

Imagine that there are Vertical Farming greenhouses that operate completely autonomously. What would the pollination of the plants look like here? One idea is to rely on robotic bees. But what could they look like?

We spoke with Dr. MatÄ›j Karásek, Guest Researcher at the Faculty of Airspace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Founder of Flapper Drones, a Spin-off of TU Delft. He and his team have developed the DelFly Nimble, a novel flapping wing robot with exceptional flight characteristics.

2019-05-24

The challenges of the Chinese agricultural sector

2019-03-13

Ubermetrics study: Consumers see insects, cultured meat & Co positiv

Ubermetrics analysed communication patterns about selected food innovations in Europe and North America.

2019-02-21

Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein in f3 interview about urban farming, rural exodus and a lack of joy in experimentation

In an interview with Eva Piepenbrock from f3 – farm.food.future. Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein compares the food start-up scene in Germany and internationally and comes to the conclusion that more venture capital is used internationally and a higher risk is accepted. He also talks about internationally important issues in the agricultural and food sectors and the potential of urban farming.
To the interview: f3.de/ein-ja-zur-landwirtschaft/

2019-02-19

The Food System in Transition: A Conversation with Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein

Saahil Parekh researcher and entrepreneur in food systems from India und Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein, Head and Founder of the Global Food Summit, met at a quaint café in Central Berlin, were they had a conversation about the transitioning food sector across its length and breadth.

2019-01-14

Interview with Dr. Michael Binder, Director Sustainability Development, Evonik Nutrition & Care GmbH

In fact, the chemical specialist Evonik is better known for its high-performance materials. But the company has also been active in the food industry for years. Dr. Michael Binder is responsible for sustainability in the Nutrition & Care segment and talks in an interview about the contribution and importance of this topic for Evonik.

2019-01-07

"der Freitag" reports about our cooperation event "Essen neu denken" with "young+restless" from December 13, 2018

Carrots from the subway?
The world's population is growing. More and more people are moving to cities. What does this mean for nutrition? A discussion about vegetables in containers and free-range lettuce.

2018-11-29

"Rethink Food", a „young+restless“ event in cooperation with the Global Food Summit 2019

The Global Food Summit invites to the Telefónica Basecamp event "Rethink Food", taking place December 13, 2018 at 06:30 pm in Berlin. An exciting kick off of the Global Food Summit in March. Click here to sign on!