Fraunhofer Agriculture and Food Industry Alliance

The circular economy is not purely an ecological necessity, but a strategic political one!

This was the topic of discussion for Fraunhofer IVV Institute Director Prof. Dr. Andrea Büttner at the Circular Summit in Haar. Under the patronage of Minister President Dr. Markus Söder, she discussed the opportunities, risks, and role of national and Bavarian circular economy strategies with Maximilian Böltl, member of the Bavarian State Parliament, Dr. Philipp Sprau, Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection, Meike Fromm, Pivot Regulatory GmbH, and Christine Fischer, Bavarian Housing Industry Association.

Prof. Büttner emphasized: “The circular economy is not just a question of recycling, it is a question of Germany's national sovereignty. If we can preserve systemically important resources domestically and use them in the long term, we will ensure the security of our country and Europe.”

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“What we urgently need now is a scale-up and investment by politicians and industry in the technologies that have already been developed, so that they can be combined and put to effective use—an important example of this is innovative recycling technologies that can directly recover high-performance polymer materials and plastics, among other things, while at the same time removing critical contaminants.”

This is how we create a resilient and sustainable society!

Find more information here.

To produce protein-rich foods sustainably, novel protein sources offer an alternative to meat, dairy and other animal products. In the FutureProteins flagship project, six Fraunhofer institutes have developed closed circulatory indoor cultivation systems for year-round production of proteins from alternative sources, independent of the climate and seasons. Then, as the next step, the researchers also combined the proteins and raw materials derived from plants, fungi, algae and insects with each other for the first time and processed them into prototypes for foods. The novel products and meat alternatives produced in this way are highly nutritionally valuable.

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Main topics:

Detection methods for contaminated consumer goods: Insights into modern detection techniques.

Challenges in online retail: Strategies for ensuring product safety.

Occupational health and safety and imported goods contaminated with chemicals: Health risks for employees and protective measures.

Legal basis for imported goods and health protection: comparison of international and national regulations.

Emissions from untested consumer goods: pollution from indoor emissions.

Problems along the supply chain: container outgassing and chemical contamination.

BfR analytical methods: status quo

Legal regulations and product safety: Challenges due to diffuse requirements.

Why participate? Gain comprehensive insights and discuss current product safety challenges from the comfort of your own home. This event offers a valuable platform for exchanging ideas with experts and developing sustainable solutions.

Register here.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Büttner, spokesperson for the Alliance for the Food Industry, was on a delegation trip to East Africa from Oct. 28th to Nov. 2nd 2024 under the leadership of Bavaria's State Secretary for Economic Affairs Tobias Gotthardt. The trip first took them to Nairobi for three days and then to Dar es Salaam.

“The discussions I was able to hold during this trip, particularly in the areas of raw materials, efficient processing and value creation networks, are of enormous importance - and not just for East Africa, but also for us in Europe,” says Andrea Büttner. “There is a growing relevance in looking at possible future scenarios, in terms of building sustainable supply systems that are both resilient and future-proof.”

The challenges and opportunities in the comparison between East Africa and Germany show astonishing parallels in many regions - after all, it is essentia to strengthen entrepreneurship, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises, and the targeted promotion of young talent and young entrepreneurship.
There was particularly intensive discussion about the need to link primary production and further processing and value creation much more closely in strong regional value chains. The need for sustainable energy and water supply and use was a top topic in all discussions.

Our Fraunhofer research in the field of bioeconomy and circular economy offers enormous starting points and potential for developing solutions together with our African partners that can contribute to global security of supply. The dialog between science, politics and business must be further intensified in order to create viable, sustainable systems in the long term.   

“The trip was therefore a valuable step in this direction,” says Andrea Büttner.

Over the last few decades, agriculture has repeatedly adapted to external adapted to external requirements. Currently, climate change, sustainability, (dwindling) biodiversity biodiversity and the call for renewable raw materials and renewable energies are having just as much of an impact on agricultural businesses as the desire for a resilient and regional food supply, more organic farming, animal welfare, new food and distribution food and distribution structures. Transformation is a necessary condition for the future of agriculture:
Consumers are calling for sustainably produced food, climate and water protection, more biodiversity and landscape conservation, as well as the cultivation of drought- and heat-resistant varieties and plant species and the shortage of labor shortages in the agricultural sector are the challenges facing agriculture and demand far-reaching decisions.
On May 7, 2024, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier invited nine experts from science, companies and interest groups to a workshop discussion in Müncheberg. The aim of the exchange was to collect individual transformation approaches for the future of agriculture and to discuss their sustainability potential. The findings were then shared and discussed with the Federal President.
The Fraunhofer Agriculutre and Food Industry Alliance was represented by Susann Vierbauch, who presented the Fraunhofer Initiative Biogenic Value Creation and Smart Farming as a central building block. The transfer from science to implementation is not just a lever, but a key performance indicator.

To coincide with the consumer boom on the annual Black Friday, the Fraunhofer High Performance Center for Secure Intelligent Systems (LZSiS) initiated an expert panel on consumer goods containing chemicals in November 2023.

The reasons for this were the 30% increase from 2018 to 2022 in the proportion of banned chemicals in consumer products, which mostly originate from the Far East and reach stores and consumers via (online) trade, and the desire to raise consumer awareness of the issue.

You can find the video here (In German only)

What does the Future of Health look like? This question was explored from October 11 to 13, 2023 as part of the 3rd Summit at the TUM Campus in the Olympic Park in Munich. This year's event focused on "Sustainable Health" and offered an interdisciplinary, scientific discourse on current topics in sustainable health research.
On the second day of the summit, the focus was on sustainable nutrition. Prof. Dr. Andrea Büttner, Managing Director of the Fraunhofer IVV and spokesperson for the Fraunhofer Food Alliance, explained the connection between sustainability, resilience and sovereignty and spoke about visions for nutritional competencies. This was followed by a panel discussion with Prof. Dr. Volker Sieber, TUM Munich, and Mark Schneider, CEO Nestlé.

Find additional information here

Last week, a remarkable event took place in the idyllic German town of Kulmbach, far from the hustle and bustle and tragedies of the outside world. From Monday to Wednesday, the spotlight was on a topic of the utmost global importance: "Ensuring food security through AI".
Even as the world faces challenges, we have a great responsibility to advance science. This responsibility is reflected in our collective efforts to address the critical issue of food security. Imagine a world where AI technologies work in harmony with the needs of food security. This vision is being actively pursued by world-leading academic institutions, significant investments in research and development and innovative start-ups in countries such as Israel, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bavaria/Germany.
The Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Energy and Technology organized a three-day event in Kulmbach in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Center for Secure Intelligent Systems, the University of Bayreuth, the Food Cluster and the Bavarian Research Alliance. The event included a day of visits to local companies specializing in food technology and food safety, followed by a workshop day dedicated to forging new cooperation ideas.

The partner countries - Israel, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bavaria/Germany - came together to share their expertise and innovations in improving food safety through the power of AI. The event was primarily aimed at SMEs, industry partners and scientific institutions in the fields of food technology, food safety and artificial intelligence. It was a gathering of brilliant researchers and visionary personalities from various companies committed to shaping the future of food safety.
The event centered around a panel discussion where I shared the work of the Fraunhofer Agri-Food Alliance, a dedicated group of 13 institutes working tirelessly to shape a better future. Our common goal is to harness the potential of AI and innovation to tackle the challenges of hunger and food shortages. Everyone has the right to safe food.

A big thank you to the organizers of this event for inviting us. I had the pleasure of meeting and interacting with brilliant people at the event and I am very excited about the prospect of working with them. My special thanks go to my two Fraunhofer colleagues, Isik Turkmen (IVV) and Stefan Rasche (IME), who provided valuable insights in their presentations.
As we reflect on this event, we realize the potential of AI to change the landscape of food security. It is inspiring to see minds from different corners of the world coming together under the banner of the Alliance for Food and Agriculture to work together for a better, safer and more secure future.