The global agrifood system was created by people to serve the needs of people. The agrifood system is thus also, if not primarily, a socio-economic system. However, extracting value added from nature has become harder to achieve as the accelerating climate crisis and the similarly accelerating loss of biodiversity interact to challenge long-established agrifood production patterns.
Against this background, we conduct research on the role of horticulture for economic development and food security in Research Group QUALITY 3, using quantitative micro-economic concepts such as food security and dietary diversity, survey and behavioural experimental data, and multi-variate micro-econometric methods.
Our research focuses on three related themes:
Food security in agrifood value chains: We investigate food security in horticulture with detailed information from individuals and households over time. Our ‘model’ is the Life in Kyrgyzstan (LiK) Study, the longest running individual-level panel study in the former Soviet Union outside of Russia. For example, we demonstrated how horticultural exports shape household food security and income.
Food security and food choices: We ask how actors in the agrifood sector behave and how that behaviour changes food security. We study these questions drawing both on large scale survey data and on behavioural lab experiments using our own mobile EconLab research infrastructure. For example, we identified adverse coping strategies and severe food insecurity in four African countries during the pandemic using phone survey data from the BMBF-funded Life with Corona-Africa study.
Food security in crises settings: We analyse the effectiveness and impacts of home garden interventions to strengthen food security in developing countries, especially in crisis settings. We also investigate how best to deliver food aid and humanitarian assistance in crises settings, working with practice partners like the World Food Program. We have published a series of papers in this field, for example on home- and school garden intervention in post-earthquake Nepal, which failed to change children’s dietary choices or their anaemia.
Our research thus addresses fundamental micro-economic questions concerning the organisation and performance of plant-based agrifood systems in a changing world. We thus address the specific IGZ challenges on Climate Change, Biodiversity & Pesticide Reduction, Healthy Nutrition & Food Security as well as Resource-Efficient Agrifood Systems.
As a Heisenberg Professor, Tilman Brück heads the "Zero Hunger Lab", a multi-site working group between Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the IGZ, which is dedicated to empirically analysing food security in crisis and conflict situations. The Zero Hunger Lab also organizes the annual international expert conference Fragile Lives.
