How many hectares do we need to grow our food? As consumers, are we interested in where the food we consume every day comes from? What does grey energy mean and how can the ecological balance of our food be improved?
October 16th is celebrated as World Food Day. On the subject of "Healthy and fair nutrition for all", Agrarinfo and Weltacker Schweiz organized a three-part series of events in Liechtenstein with a guided tour of the Vaduz food field as well as presentations and discussions in the Technopark.
The evening was moderated by Johanna Herrigel and opened by Mayor Manfred Bischof, where the main topics of the evening were: How we can avoid grey energy in the future? How we could treat our diet in a locally and energetically sensible way? and
What is the municipality of Vaduz already doing with the Lokal+Fair Label?
The podium discussion covered a lot of aspects related to the food sector in general. A lot of facts were show-cased and the panellists discussed future prospects for the local region of Dreiländereck. During the field tour, Weltackers showed the facts and figures related to the 2000m2 land available per capita worldwide and why one-third of the food produced is thrown away.
In order to show the complexity of our food systems, Matthias Stucki from the ZHAW explained the so-called Life Cycle Assessments which takes into account all the steps that our food goes through, from production to recycling. He also gave a brief insight into this and showed the process of how to use the Life Cycle Assessment tool to calculate the CO2 footprint of food. He impressively pointed out that 7.5 barrels of oil per person are needed annually to meet our need for food. Almost half of the CO2 emissions are in the area of animal products.
Following were the representatives from the corresponding local organization: Florian Bernardi: VBO, Flurina Seger: Stiftung Lebenswertes Liechtenstein, Sandra Fausch: Verein Ackerschaft, Gebi Beck: Integrity.Earth
We presented our initiatives in Guatemala and Mesoamerica region, along with our recent developments in Liechtenstein and our drive to bring in the paradigm shift around environmental issues in an informative and interesting way. Our drive interfaces coordination not only to fight symptoms but to implement effective and regenerative measures. By using the latest digital technologies, we make information flows more transparent in the field of energy accessible.
During the discussion, the topic of politics and the networking of the various players were mentioned several times as tools to apply knowledge transfer and subsidies where they are needed. After all, "if it pays off, you can do it." With renewable energies, it is often the case that it pays off, even without taking ecology into account. With food, we have to address other issues as well. We aim to approach the farmers in the field of energy as well because we are convinced that the farmer should become an entrepreneur again. A big focus for us is tokenization, as we are looking at all products from a global perspective to also transparently map trade with other countries. The advantage of blockchain technology is that we can decentralize all the information and everything gets value, by definition of the community society. There is huge potential here to get effective transparency at the click of a button. This can happen on a global level as well as a local level.
We also see that intergenerational projects are important to benefit from each other's experience and knowledge. With the age of industrialization, we have lost this. We have some ideas to include this aspect, with the project "Networking in the garden", and housing project "Modern way of living".
Many past measures have been taken for financial and logistical reasons, which in the long run have neither been sustainable nor generated any added value. Now it is time to act, not only in the various local initiatives but also at the political level with financial possibilities. It is important that the associations, foundations and organizations that are already involved share their experiences with politics and also act together as a network.
Everyone is aware that we should and want to build a relationship or a higher appreciation with our food. We want to inform and tell stories, build a social eating and consumer culture. It affects everyone and we are encouraged to incorporate life cycle thinking and the circular economy into our daily lives.