Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security

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In order to focus the European activities in this area and align them with the "National Research Strategy BioEconomy 2030," the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection are both involved in the European Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) with the topic Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI). 
 
The aim of this initiative is to more strongly integrate the research funding of the member states and establish a common research program. The first research agenda, dating from 2010, contains the following five primary research themes:

• Sustainable food security under climate change
• Sustainable, environmentally friendly growth of agriculture, taking into consideration current and future climatic developments and availability of resources
• Balancing of trade-offs between food production, biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Adaptation to climate change throughout the entire value chain of food production
• Reduction of greenhouse gas production in agriculture and forestry

As a pilot measure in the first of these core themes a trans-disciplinary, European network of excellent research groups is to be established. Divided into several sub-networks, this FACCE Knowledge Hub is to contribute to our understanding of the effects of climate change on agricultural production, on trade with agricultural products and the ensuing social consequences. Furthermore, the interpretation of the resulting and already existing models and research results is to be optimized, and the integration of the models facilitated. As a result, existing uncertainties in the prediction of the consequences of climate change on agricultural production and trade are to be reduced. A corresponding call was published on 5 August 2011. In mid-2012 the German-coordinated Knowledge Hub with the title MACSUR (Modeling European Agriculture with Climate Chance for Food Security) started its work. All in all 73 research groups from 17 countries are involved. Eight German research facilities are integrated into the network.