About "Third Ways of Feeding the World"

Feeding the world has always been a key challenge of human beings. Nowadays the issues of hunger and poverty remain prevalent and the need to tackle their causes and exacerbating factors is becoming more urgent every day. The problem of hunger and poverty reduction seems to become even more complex due to the increasing trade-offs between agricultural production and the environment. On the one hand climate change is having catastrophic effects across the agricultural industry and global food supply, while ironically farming is a leading cause of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions on the other hand. Although the impact of technological developments in agriculture has shown itself to be enormous over the decades – from new seed varieties to industrial farming – and there is no reason for progress to stop now, but the direction of future innovation might change from pure economic to ecological efficiency.

Hunger, however, is not a pure technological problem. According to the FAO we do actually produce enough to feed the world, thus, beyond technical especially human factors, i.e. the development of effective economic and political government systems, are important determinants of achieving future Sustainable Development Goals.

Finally, since some trade-offs/tensions between sustainable agriculture and the environment as well as between growth and a fair distribution of welfare across social groups and nations are unavoidable and thus will persist as fundamental dilemmas in the future, an effective solution of feeding the world requires a social organization of a societal discourse that allows an ethic evaluation and choice among these unavoidable trade-offs.

Research program

In this context the research program „Third Ways of Feeding The World“ corresponds to the development of an interdisciplinary approach incorporating agricultural science, agricultural economics, and agricultural ethics to better understand the trade-offs between sustainable agriculture and the environment, especially climate change and water supply.

Doctoral Program

The program’s curriculum is designed to provide doctoral students with the skills required to conduct independent research within the TWFW paradigm, to expose them with state-of-the-art research in the related disciplines and to bring them into contact with outstanding international scholars and political practitioners early on in their career.

Academic Offers by Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst

Besides providing financial aid, the program of Evangelisches Studienwerk comprises a wide range of academic offers including summer universities and graduates’ conventions.