To nurture and value your own
A solid, regionally supported market is the basic prerequisite for prosperity and the leap into global trade – and thus also the leap into a crisis-proof state offood security.
Because the development there is first and foremost a development from the bottom up out of the respective culture and thinking. It begins with the production of food in and on the surrounding soils and marketing of food in the reachable, approximate area.
Food security and thus the conditions for prosperity exist only in the long term, as long as these soils are maintained in their function or even improved in their fertility.
Germany is also a developing country
Small-scale farming, marginal yields, and lack of know-how dominate in countries of the global South, whereas rural communities in Germany deal with the challenges of over-fertilized fields, increasing occurance of extreme weather events, political restrictions, and loss of ecosystem services.
For this reason, German municipalities are pushing rural development projects for greater sustainability, social participation and technological structural change to open up new markets.
Urban regions are developing new approaches to food production in highly efficient growing systems using growing media or hydroponic systems.
In the transition area from country to city, both approaches are found at the same time. Regionality, organic production and direct marketing of the daily bread come to the fore.
Development aid close up
The principles of rural development in Germany apply just as much to the countries of the global South. This means that here, too, the focus should be on the independent development of solutions.
Particularly with regard to food security, North-South transfers of know-how and technology have in the past come to naught, and with them the hope of flourishing bilateral trade.
If a country opens up to the international market in a way so disconnects from the regional market or disregards cultural structures, there are highly questionable blossoms appearing. For granted, most of the time, they are detrimental for the own many (and highly profitable for the few, as we observe around the globe).
One of those blossoms is stifling a local market for key staples and creating dependencies to countries at the other side of the globe. In West Africa, the import of cheap rice from the U.S. has destroyed the market for regional rice.
In terms of locally available resources, it is significant that one of the largest exporters of rock phosphate to the world, Senegal, is denied access to this phosphate source for Senegalese smallholder farmers. Instead, mineral resources are channeled directly into the international market, from whose value creation the rural population remains largely excluded.
My offer includes support of R&D projects providing services of general project management, quality management according to ISO 9001:2015, marketing and sales support, workshops, trainings as well as product validation according to scientific standards.