• The Consortium:

How can we provide future generations with enough healthy food? Are salt plants, algae, grills & jellyfish alternatives to traditional food sources? And how can we sustainably produce food in urban and suburban areas?

The joint project food4future - Food for the Future (f4f), funded by the German Ministry for Education and research as part of the programme Agricultural Systems of the Future, investigates radical innovations for a sustainable and sound food supply. By creating and adapting key technologies - (UV)LED technology and composite lightweight construction materials - innovation approaches are being developed and tested for their technical feasibility and their economic and ecological viability.

food4future conducts sociological and anthropological studies and deals with different future scenarios. These help to identify possible challenges to future food security and act as a driver of innovation. Subprojects under the lead of the Chair of Innovation Management at Freie Universität Berlin in the socioecological research field are Participation of the public in research projects with different time-horizons and Identification and evaluation of futures options for future food and identifying R & D needs (FUFO). Freie Universität Berlin also develops the food4future-Lab-Platform in a later stage of the project.

Coordination of the consortium F4F: Prof. Dr. Monika Schreiner, IGZ

For more information please visit the website of the project F4F: https://www.food4future.de/de/home

• Project description 1 - Participation of the public in research projects with different time-horizons:
  

The aim of the project is to investigate participation of the public in research/innovation processes with short-, medium- and long-term horizons by employing participatory techniques/methods within the project F4F. Various and diverse positive effects are currently attributed to participation of the public which has become mandatory in many research and innovation projects. However, many questions about participation are unanswered, especially when it comes to projects with very long-term horizons. Under what conditions is participation in projects with different time horizons useful and provides insights or knowledge for the participants (penetration depth)? Which parts of the public (citizens, stakeholders, experts etc.) add value within participative processes? When is public participation useful? Are expert opinions more substantial? Here, acceptance research is reaching its limits because this discourse has to be focused on possible, probable and desirable futures - while considering the unknowingness of future needs. The latter are associated with great uncertainties and non-knowledge i.e. the lack of concrete ideas - in science as well as in public. The overall objective of the subproject is to investigate the usefulness and effectiveness of various methods for participation of the public in research projects with different time horizons. Accordingly the project uses the whole F4F-project as research-object. Thus, the project is located on a meso/macro level: the participation of the public can be understood as a dialogue on a macro level, the investigation of the feedback into the consortium takes place on the meso level.

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Carsten Dreher (FUB)

Researcher: Madita Amoneit (FUB)

Project partners: IGZ, ATB, ZMT, PYCO, pmp, InnoMat, Osram, Terra Urbana, ADM Wild, HUB-IRI THESys, HUB

• Project description 2 - FUFO - Identification and evaluation of futures options for future food and identifying R&D needs:
  

The aim of the subproject is to transdisciplinarily investigate the long-term horizons of the main topic area (food project) "Future Food" for the F4F project in the second half of the project duration. The start of this subproject is therefore planned for the third year of the overall project. The subproject aims to develop a concretisation of the future idea / vision of Future Food based on the current projects of the F4F-project and their results. This should serve as the basis for a sustainable development of the F4F project beyond the fifth year and identify the development options and their timing by the use of a roadmap. Thus, the subproject FUFO has a cross-sectional responsibility for all subfields of the F4F project and interconnections with all other projects. Methodologically, a multi-stage Delphi procedure is carried out within the subproject involving project-internal and external experts as well as stakeholders. In this way, it will be possible to monitor, adapt and sharpen future contents of the F4F project and its subprojects. Objectives are (a) systematically capturing and analysing the results of the F4F-project, (b) developing possible elements of "Future Food", (c) the discourse by means of a multi-stage Delphi-process with different interest groups (internal / external), (d) timing by means of a roadmap, (e) the identification of further R&D needs and (f) the discourse with the (professional) public on possible elements of "Future Food".

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Carsten Dreher (FUB)

Researcher: Delia Mangelkramer (FUB)

Project partners: IGZ, ATB, ZMT, PYCO, pmp, InnoMat, Osram, Terra Urbana, ADM Wild, HUB-IRI THESys, HUB