Projects

The project “Access and Exclusion along the charcoal commodity chain in Ghana” (AX) was implemented between 2015 and 2021 as a collaboration between the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Tropenbos Ghana and University of Copenhagen.

The project examined the livelihood implications of charcoal production and trade, the mechanisms of access along the charcoal commodity chain, and the environmental impacts of charcoal production.

Period: 2015 – 2021

Financing source: Danida

Amount: DKK 8.9 mio. (IFRO share: DKK 3.4 mio.)

Project coordinator: Former IFRO Associate Professor Christian Pilegaard Hansen

IFRO contact person: Henrik Meilby

AfricanBioServices is a four year 10 million euro research project involving thirteen institutions in Europa and East Africa focusing on natural resource management problems in the cross-boundary Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania.

THE PROJECT IS CLOSED
Project period: 2015-2019

The project was financed by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 641918.

IFRO researchers: Associate professor Martin Reinhardt Nielsen, Professor Carsten Smith-Hall and Jette Bredahl Jacobsen

About the project:

The AfricanBioServices consortium brings together a uniquely equipped group of researchers with complementary skills in human welfare, socio-economics, ecology, biodiversity, climate change, and ecosystem services with key research institutes, management authorities and policymakers from the East African community.

Work Packages overview

AfricanBioServices is organised into seven interlinked work packages (WPs):

• WP1 assembles, integrates and constructs a relational database to curate existing data and data produced by the project for the region.
• WP2 quantifies the connections between human population growth, land-use change and biodiversity changes.
• WP3 analyses the consequences of climate change for key aspects of biodiversity in the region.
• WP4 empirically tests the links between biodiversity and the core ecosystem services on which people in the region depend.
• WP5 quantifies human reliance on ecosystem services and examines management options.
• WP6 manages communication and dissemination of the project results.
• WP7 is devoted to project management.

WP 5 - quantifies human reliance on ecosystem services and examines management options

Martin Reinhardt Nielsen is the leader of WP5 that includes three tasks with associated overall objectives:

1. to quantify and analyse patterns in the contribution of ecosystem service derived income to household welfare in the GSME and evaluate the welfare implications of changes in ecosystem service provision for different societal groups.
2. to analyse the natural resource policy framework in Tanzania and Kenya and provide recommendations for adjustments to ensure sustainable management and simultaneously promoting poverty alleviation objectives in the governance of ecosystem services.
3. to assess household’s preferences and trade-offs in choices regarding changing ecosystem services, policies and management strategies and determine what incentives best encourage households to choose livelihood strategies that are compatible with maintaining ecosystem function and ecosystem service delivery.

Findings and results:

WP5 has produced eleven deliverables and a growing number of scientific publications and has thus contributed to fulfilling the expected impacts of AfricanBioServices by enabling the identification and development of more effective policies and other responses to managing drivers of change in the GSME. Specifically WP5 has quantified adjacent communities reliance on protected areas in the GSME and its relationship with their wellbeing; evaluated the feasibility of manipulating substitute prices to reduce bushmeat demand; the consequence of future road development across the GSME; reviewed the experience with Wildlife Management Areas; evaluated the risk of violence as a consequence of environmental degradation; and tried to make sense of the current drive to fence land in Kenya. These and many other studies carried out under WP5 has produced specific recommendations for policy development and management interventions.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 2011-2014

The main objective of the project is to understand this co-existence of high agricultural growth and poverty pockets. The project aims to develop robust technical methods to identify and assess poverty pockets and to produce policy guidelines for alleviating the local poverty.

About the project:

Several countries in Asia have experienced rapid growth and diversification of agricultural production due to combined demand from both the domestic and the global markets. The growth and diversification processes take place in agricultural growth regions, where state policies (infrastructural expansion, institutional strengthening, etc.) and private commercial activities (creation and development of agriculturally-based value chains) have favourably interacted. Interestingly, however, such agricultural growth regions often embed geographically concentrated areas (‘pockets’) where poverty prevails. The main objective of the project is to understand this co-existence of high agricultural growth and poverty pockets. The project aims to develop robust technical methods to identify and assess poverty pockets and to produce policy guidelines for alleviating the local poverty. The project is implemented in the Mekong River Delta (MRD) in Vietnam where production of rice has dominated for centuries but now is being supplemented by production of fruit and cocoa. The MRD has experienced high agricultural growth for a prolonged period resulting in an impressive poverty reduction. Even so, poverty rates vary greatly across the provinces and even within the provinces. This makes the MRD an ideal place to study the co-existence of local growth miracles and poverty pockets.

IFRO researcher: Professor Christian Lund 

The AgTraIn programme has defined a common foundation which all doctoral candidates must build on regardless of research topic and institutions.

• Participation in three obligatory joint doctoral courses for all candidates run in connection to the annual workshop;
• All doctorates must actively communicate their research to an external audience and conferences, popular scientific outputs, briefs and press releases, etc.
• All doctoral candidates must engage in limited teaching activities in relation to their thesis subject.

In AgTraIn, the emphasis is on applied research. Doctoral candidates will therefore typically do fieldwork (in a wide sense) and it is encouraged, starting already in the project formulation phase, that fieldwork be conducted in connection with stays at Associate Partners, who will contribute with hosting and co-supervising functions

Funding and collaboration

AgTraIn is part of the Erasmus+: Erasmus Mundus programme initiated by the European Commission to enhance and promote European higher education throughout the world.

The programme is jointly developed and delivered by a six-university consortium consisting of:

• University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Universita degli Studi di Catania, Italy
• University College of Cork, Ireland
• Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
• Montpellier SupAgro, France
• Wageningen University, The Netherlands

The project is led by The Department of Food and Resource Economics at University of Copenhagen together with Danish Centre for Environment and Energy at Aarhus University. The project has been financed by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

IFRO researcher: Brian H. Jacobsen

An international workshop on ammonia regulation of livestock in relation to Natura 2000 sites was held 27 November 2017 in Copenhagen. The presentations dealt with ammonia regulation in relation to livestock production in Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), The Netherlands and Denmark. At the workshop both the nature, legal and economic perspective were discussed.

The overall conclusive report in Danish:
Ammoniakregulering af husdyrbedrifter i forhold til ammoniakfølsom natur (Natura 2000) – sammenligning af Tyskland, Holland og Danmark: Samlerapport

Legal reports

• National report on the legal framework for ammonia regulation of livestock installations with a particular regard to Natura 2000 sites: Denmark
• Germany: National report on the legal framework for ammonia regulation of livestock installations with a particular regard to Natura 2000 sites
• The Netherlands: National report on the legal framework for ammonia regulation of livestock installations with a particular regard to Natura 2000 sites
• Comparison of ammonia regulation in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark – legal framework

Economic reports

• Economic analysis of ammonia regulation in Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) in relation to the Habitat Directive
• Economic analysis of the ammonia regulation in Denmark in relation to the Habitat Directive
• Economic implications of ammonia regulation in the Netherlands near nature 2000 areas
• Ammonia regulations near nature areas in Denmark and the Netherlands compared

• Economic analysis of the ammonia regulation with respect to Nature 2000 sites: Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark

The state of nature reports

• Scientific analysis on the status of designated Natura 2000 areas and the need to protect ammonia-sensitive nature. Dutch contribution
• Scientific analysis on the designation of Natura 2000 sites and the status of nature and effort: The Schleswig-Holstein situation
• Scientific analysis on the designation of Natura 2000 sites and the status of nature and effort: The Danish situation
• Scientific analysis on the designation of Natura 2000 sites and the status of nature and effort: A comparison of The Netherlands, Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark

The ANDESCROP project aims to identify durable solutions for Andean agriculture based on the competent utilisation of local agro-biodiversity.

Motivated by the current problems arising from the increase in the demand and production of Quinoa Real in the southern departments of Potosi and Oruro, Bolivia, the need for addressing problems associated with agricultural production under ecologically fragile conditions is urgent.

The obvious methods based on the utilisation of high value Andean crops involve the enhancement of research capacity within genetic resources, production, food security and marketing. This approach will serve to ensure durable increase of farmer’s production, consumption, sale and income from these nutritive crops, while reducing endemic malnutrition, in such a way as to guarantee food security.
The need for implementing the project is urgent, as several of the crops and their wild relatives are endangered due to competition from imported, low quality bulk products. Therefore, these genetic resources must be used and promoted in order to avoid loss of unique organic, high quality and nutritious foods and market opportunities of considerable present and future potential.

Objectives

• Agro-biodiversity richness
  Increase information on genetic resources through characterisation of the Andean crop diversity, current status and traditional knowledge associated with conservation and use
• Organic farming system
  Establish organic production scenarios which better respond to socio-economic and environmental conditions, and which permit to improve productivity and quality of Andean crops through sustainable use of the resources of plant, soil and water
• Food security and economics
  Contribute to the understanding of the socio-economic role of rural communities regarding the sustainable management of Andean crops, with the purpose to increase use and consumption in the family, and to improve market access of these crops

Research topics

• Inclusion of smallholders in agribusiness markets
• Institutional dimensions of public purchase programs targeting smallholders
• School breakfast program

This project aims at understanding how income and demographic changes, climate change, and trade policy uncertainties drive the future development of the animal food sectors. A set of model-based projections of animal food demand, supply and trade at national and global levels will be conducted under alternative scenarios.

The animal food sector (e.g. beef, dairy, pork, and poultry) faces a multitude of challenges. Differential income, demographical, and consumer preference changes may increase demand from some parts of the world while stagnating demand from elsewhere. Heightened attentions to climate change may require the animal food sector to be an active participant of climate mitigation efforts. Trade conflicts and regional trade agreements add further uncertainties on how such products will be traded globally in the future. This projet uses data-driven and model-based economic analysis to develop a set of scenarios consisting of different configurations of the above-mentioned drivers, and projections of future market outcomes within these scenarios.

Work Packages

• WP1. Income, demographic changes and health guidelines and global/national animal food demand
• WP2. Climate change mitigation and global/national animal food production
• WP3. Uncertain globalization and global/bilateral trade patterns of animal food products

Workshops and conferences

1. Climate change mitigation, dietary transition, and de-globalization: Implications for the animal food sector in Denmark and beyond
2. Klimaforhandlinger, handelsmønstre og forbrugertrends: Hvad betyder det for den animalske fødevaresektor?
3. Climate negotiations, trade patterns, and changing consumers: animal food sector under cross-wind?!
4. Global demand, supply and trade patterns of animal food products: current state and uncertain future development
5. Organized Session at the XVI Congress of the EAAE (European Association of Agricultural Economists)
   Assessing the “First-stage Trade Deal” between the US and China: Implications on World Agrifood Trade Patterns and China’s Agricultural and Rural Policy Adjustment

Publications

Research reports and research articles

Bouyssou, C. G., Jensen, J. D., & Yu, W. (2024). Food for thought: A meta-analysis of animal food demand elasticities across world regions. Food Policy, 122, [102581]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102581

Bouyssou, C.G., Clora, F., Jensen, J., & Yu, W. (2023). Projecting demand elasticities for disaggregated animal food products under alternative Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Contributed paper, 26th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, June 2023, Bordeaux, France.

Bouyssou, C.G., Jensbye, L. G., Jensen, J. D., & Yu, W. (2021). The global animal food market: drivers and challenges. IFRO Report No. 298. (full report; English summary; Danish summary)

Clora, F., Corong, E., & Yu, W. (2023). A flexible Approach to Modeling Carbon Pricing and Carbon Border Adjustment in the GTAP-E model. Contributed paper, 26th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, June 2023, Bordeaux, France.

Clora, F., Yu, W., & Corong, E. (2023). Alternative carbon border adjustment mechanisms in the European Union and responses: aggregate and within-coalition results. Energy Policy 174, 113454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113454 (partially funded by this project)

Clora, F., Yu, W. (2023) Modeling The Impacts Of Alternative Globalization Scenarios On International Agricultural And Food Markets. Contributed Paper, the XVII EAAE Congress, Rennes, August 29-September 1, 2023.

Clora, F., Yu, W., Baudry, G., & Costa, L. (2021). Impacts of supply-side climate change mitigation practices and trade policy regimes under dietary transition: the case of European agriculture. Environmental Research Letters, 16(12), [124048].

Jensbye, L. G., & Yu, W. (2023). Agricultural emission reduction targets at country and global levels: a bottom-up analysis. Climate Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2023.2267021

Jensbye, L., Clora, F., & Yu, W. (2023). Exploring potential impacts of carbon border adjustment mechanisms and climate clubs in agriculture. Contributed paper, 26th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, June 2023, Bordeaux, France.

Jensbye, L., Clora, F., & Yu, W. (2023). Modelling the potential to abate greenhouse gases from agriculture using detailed abatement technologies in a CGE model. Contributed paper, 26th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, June 2023, Bordeaux, France.  

Jensen, J.D. (2023) Has the 2022 food price spike reduced consumers’ economic incentive for a healthy diet? Contributed Paper, the XVII EAAE Congress, Rennes, August 29-September 1, 2023.

Han, M., Yu, W., Clora, F. (2022). Boom and Bust in China’s pig sector during 2018-2021: Recent recovery from the ASF shocks and longer-term sustainability considerations. Sustainability 14(11), [6784].  https://org/10.3390/su14116784

Yu, W. and J. D. Jensen (2022). Sustainability implications of rising global pork demand. Animal Frontiers, 12(6), pp56-60. https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfac070.

Yu, W., & Schou, J. S. (2020). Sikring af fødevareforsyningen og en fri verdenshandel er afgørende under COVID-19. Tidsskrift for Landoekonomi, 206(1), 21-23.

Yu, W. (2020). The agricultural and food dimension of the ongoing trade conflicts and tentative agreement between the US and China. Tidsskrift for Landoekonomi, 206(2), 49-60.

Progress reports

Bouyssou, C.G., L. G., Jensen, J. D., & Yu, W. (2022). International cross-sectional data and future meat and dairy consumption. (WP1 status report for 2021; available upon request).

Jensbye, L.G. and Yu. W. (2022) Climate change mitigation and global and national animal food production: a cluster analysis on setting agricultural emission targets at country level. (WP2 status report for 2021; available upon request).

Clora F. and Yu, W. (2022) Uncertain globalization and global/bilateral trade patterns of animal food products (WP3 status report for 2021; available upon request).

Popular dissemination

Yu, W., & Jensen, J. D. (2021, Nov 15). To jokere bestemmer kursen for Kinas grisemarked. landbrugsavisen.dk. https://landbrugsavisen.dk/svin/professorer-jokere-bestemmer-kursen-kinas-grisemarked

Yu, W., & Jensen, J. D. (2021, Aug 18). Vi skal spise mindre kød, men der er ét problem: Forskere ved ikke, hvordan klimaet vil påvirke forbruget. Altinget.dk. https://www.altinget.dk/foedevarer/artikel/vi-skal-spise-mindre-koed-men-der-er-et-problem-forskere-ved-ikke-hvordan-klimaet-paavirker-vores-adfaerd

Other related publications (mainly funded by other projects)

Clora, F., Yu, W., Baudry, G., & Costa, L. (2021). Impacts of supply-side climate change mitigation practices and trade policy regimes under dietary transition: the case of European agriculture. Environmental Research Letters, 16(12), [124048]. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac39bd

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 12 September 2012 - 11 September 2017

Benthis has received funding from the EU 7th Framework programme

Amount: DKK 1.1 mill.

BENTHIS will provide the knowledge to further develop the ecosystem approach to fisheries management as required in the Common Fisheries Policy and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. It will study the diversity of benthic ecosystem in European waters and the role of benthic species in the ecosystem functioning. Fisheries impacts will be studied on benthic organisms and on the geo-chemistry. The newly acquired knowledge will be synthesized in a number of generic tools that will be combined into a fishing/seabed habitat risk assessment method that will be applied to fisheries in the Baltic, North Sea, Western waters, Mediterranean and Black Sea.

IFRO coordinator: Jesper Levring Andersen

How can society trust AI algorithms to make fair healthcare decisions? AI algorithms will, by their very nature, reproduce biases and discrimination present in the data used for their training. As discrimination is illegal in applications such as hiring, fair AI algorithms have become a topic of research, where training a "fair" predictive model is an optimization task among "fair" solutions defined by hard constraints.

Healthcare, however, is not constrained by the law, but by ethics: We would likely not, in the name of fairness, allow reducing our diagnostic abilities for one part of the population just because we cannot diagnose another.

This project will, via large-scale registry studies of major depressive disorder, statistically examine the nature of bias in diagnosis and treatment. In an interaction between ethics/philosophy and mathematical modelling, we will redefine fairness for the medical domain and develop predictive AI algorithms that are, in the new sense, fair.

Visit the project website here.

IFRO coordinator: Sune Hannibal Holm

Calorie Accounting in Supermarkets is a research project that aims to develop, implement, and document the effect of calorie accounting as a management and reporting tool for helath promotion initiatives in the grocery retail sector. 

Jørgen Dejgård Jensen is leader of a work package with the objective to  investigate the impact of alternative in-store interventions on sales and calorie turnover.

Making Bayesian Belief Network models for natural resource management in Greenland.

IFRO is a partner in the CAPARDUS project in its work package 2 conducting case studies in different Arctic regions. Specifically, IFRO project members will in collaboration with NORDECO organise a workshop with participants from Greenlandic natural resource user groups, government agencies and research institutions to discuss guidelines and standards in community-based monitoring in Greenland. The focus will be on identifying new technologies for the collection and integration of data, develop knowledge-based planning and improved decision making. One such technology is Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) models that explicitly enables incorporation of different forms of information and knowledge including local ecological knowledge.

Project period: 2020-2023

IFRO coordinators: Henrik Meilby and Martin Reinhardt Nielsen

The project was financed by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 869673.

About the project

Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) Models

BBN models are increasingly used to guide decision-making in complex social-ecological systems and where data is deficient. Dynamic or interactive maps can be made available through internet sites and mobile apps enabling policymakers and resource users to explore the outcome of various policies under different scenarios on their own including impacts on living conditions and quality of life.

Workshop

The workshop will draw on experience gained in the EU H2020 project AfricanBioServices to build the capacity of scientists in Greenland to use this tool.

The workshop will be used to develop a BBN model for a specific natural resource management problem in Greenland using present expert input. The model will be tested and adjusted through presentation, discussion and incorporation of the input of the primary resource users in a relevant municipality. Results will be presented and discussed at a research school held in Greenland in collaboration with other CAPARDUS activities.

Objective

The overall objective of CAPARDUS is to establish a comprehensive framework for development, understanding and implementation of Arctic standards.
The framework will integrate standards used by communities active in the Arctic including research and services, indigenous and local communities, commercial operators and governance bodies. This will support sustainable economic development, safe activities, emergency prevention and response, and improved understanding and conservation of the environment.

This project ‘Capacity and dynamics of agribusiness innovation systems’ (CABIS) aimed to enhance our understanding of factors causing limitations in innovation capacity and innovation competitiveness in ABIS developing country contexts. This project used new institutional economic sociology, new sociological institutionalism, innovation, social network, and constructivist and social learning as lens for analyzing:

• How are individual actors’ innovation-oriented practices influenced by multiple embeddedness and institutional environments;
• What characterize relationships between individual actors’ innovation-oriented practices such as innovation, networking, learning and business practices;
• How these practices, in turn, influence innovation performance and competitiveness of ABIS in Vietnam and Tanzania.  

Research topics

• Innovation practices and network
• Knowledge production in transition
• Knowledge commercialization

Funding

Funded by EU under the scope of UE’s call FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG

Collaborators

• Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD), Vietnam
• Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania

The center (BCM)  explored the new Web 3.0 infrastructure and study design of secure and economically sound markets that ensure efficiency and fairness in a new decentralised economy.

2019-2023

IFRO coordinator: Jens Leth Hougaard

Visit the center's website here.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 1 July 2010 - 30 June 2016

The CFEM center will produce new research results in building on methods in economic theory allowing existing and emerging electronic markets to be better analyzed and understood. CFEM will further design new trading mechanisms that suits better the needs of existing and new forms of e-commerce. And finally, CFEM will develop new results in algorithmics, operations research and cryptography allowing such mechanisms to be implemented efficiently and securely.

CFEM has received funding from Det Strategiske Forskningsråd (The Danish Council for Strategic Research)

Amount: DKK 4.774.040 (for the total project)

IFRO coordinator: Jens Leth Hougaard

IFRO participant: Kurt Nielsen

Visit the center's website here. 

Grønt Udviklings- og Demonstrationsprogram (GUDP), under Miljø- og Fødevareministeriet, har givet tilsagn til følgende projekt om udfordringen ved affolkning og vigende økonomisk vækst i landdistrikterne, samt hvordan man  imødekomme behovet for øget værditilvækst i fødevareproduktionen. Projektet hører under Organic RDD 2.2 2015

IFRO forskere: Sigrid Denver, Kia Ditlevsen. Jørgen Dejgård Jensen

Finansiering: GUDP under Miljøstyrelsen, 1.651.713 DKK

Tidsperiode: 2016-2017

Om projektet

Affolkning og vigende økonomisk vækst i landdistrikterne er en udfordring
- behov for øget værditilvækst i fødevareproduktionen

Forarbejdede lokale produkter kan være baseret på lokale råvarer, lokal
forarbejdning, lokal afsætning, …

Forskningsspørgsmål:
1. Operationalisering af begrebet lokal produktion - hvilke geografiske
egenskaber eksisterer på markedet i dag? (WP1)
2. Hvad er forbrugernes opfattelse af forskellige geografiske egenskaber i
samspil med økologisk produktion? (WP2)
3. Hvad er forbrugernes tilbøjelighed til at betale en merpris for sådanne
produkter? (WP3)

Forventede resultater

Kvalitative og kvantitative resultater om forbrugernes opfattelse af
ægtheden, troværdigheden og kvaliteten af økologiske fødevarer med
forskellige geografiske egenskaber

F.eks. hvad er betalingsviljen for økologiske produkter når produktion og
distribution foregår lokalt i en tæt integreret værdikæde?

Hermed understøttes nye investeringer i udvikling af lokale fødevarer og
markedsføringskoncepter indenfor den økologiske sektor

Bedre udnyttelse af markedspotentialet for geografisk differentierede
økologiske produkter vil:
• gavne væksten i den økologiske sektor
• opretholde den økonomiske aktivitet i de danske landdistrikter

CRISPR Salmon: Genome editing – a game-changer in salmon farming: Conditions for social and moral acceptance

IFRO researchers: Lotte Holm, Mickey Gjerris

Salmon farming is the cornerstone of the Norwegian bioeconomy, but negative environmental impact and fish welfare are important challenges that have to be solved. New biotechnologies such as CRISPR hold a potential great promise for the industry to become more sustainable and increase fish welfare, but is it socially and morally acceptable to use this technology on farmed salmon? 

We are an interdisciplinary research team consisting of philosophers and biotechnicians who attempt to answer this question through an empirical ethics-approach. This means that we combine qualitative research with normative analysis. We interview stakeholders and consumers about their relationship to salmon and what they think about the acceptability of using CRISPR in the salmon farming industry, and use this to inform a normative reflection on its moral acceptability.

We ask three questions:

• What are our relationship with salmon, and how does our perception of salmon bear on what kind of treatment is considered acceptable?
• Is it socially and morally acceptable to use CRISPR on farmed salmon, and if so, which conditions need to be in place?
• Can CRISPR make the salmon farming more sustainable?

Visit the project website here.

Projektets formål er at indsamle og indberette data for den danske fiskeindustri. Data anvendes til forskning og videnskabelig rådgivning vedrørende EU’s fælles fiskeripolitik. Danmark er ifølge Rådets forordning No 199/2008 forpligtet til at indsamle og indberette data for den danske fiskerisektor, herunder den danske fiskeindustri.

For en uddybende beskrivelse af det danske dataindsamlingsprogram henvises til det flerårige dataindsamlingsprogram for Danmark 2017-2019. EU Regulation 2017/1004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 may 2017 sætter rammerne for indsamling, forvaltning og anvendelse af biologiske, miljømæssige, tekniske og socioøkonomiske data vedrørende fiskerisektoren med det formål at understøtte den fælles fiskeripolitik ved videnskabelig rådgivning baseret på denne dataindsamling.

Der indsamles data for fiskeindustrien til at belyse den økonomiske situation i sektoren. Data anvendes i STECF’s (Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries) arbejdsgruppe for fiskeindustri, som udgiver en rapport om den økonomiske situation i sektoren for hele EU. Dataindberetningen sker hvert andet år til EU.

På baggrund af de indsamlede data publiceres også en IFRO udredning om situationen i den danske fiskeindustri, som indeholder en mere detaljeret opdeling af industrien på anvendte fiskearter end i EU.

Projektperiode: 01.01.2019 - 31.03.2020

IFRO koordinator: Rasmus Nielsen

Finansiering: Projektet er finansieret af EU, Den Europæiske Hav-og Fiskerifond og Udenrigsministeriet

The European Union has committed to the gradual elimination of discarding.

DiscardLess will help provide the knowledge, tools and technologies as well as the involvement of the stakeholders to achieve this. These will be integrated into Discard Mitigation Strategies (DMS) proposing cost-effective solutions at all stages of the seafood supply chain. The first focus is on preventing the unwanted catches from ever being caught. This will promote changes in gear using existing and innovative selectivity technology, and changes in fishing tactics based on fishers’ and scientists’ knowledge. The second focus is on making best use of the unavoidable unwanted catch. We will detail technical and marketing innovations from the deck, through the supply chain to the final market, including monitoring, traceability and valorization components. DiscardLess will evaluate the impacts of discarding on the marine environment, on the economy, and across the wider society. We will evaluate these impacts before, during and after the implementation of the landing obligation, allowing comparison between intentions and outcomes. Eliminating discards is as much a societal challenge as a fishery management one, so we will also evaluate stakeholders’ perception of discards. DiscardLess will describe the changes in management and the associated governance structures needed to cement the process. We will propose approaches to managing discards in a range of case study fisheries across Europe, encompassing differences in specific discarding issues. All these innovations will be combined in integrated Internet based interactive programs (DMS toolbox) that will help fishers to evaluate the present and future situation and to take a more qualified decision of how to adjust to the new regime. Also, we will disseminate the outcome of the project and maximize knowledge transfer across Europe through an educational environment – teaching the next generation – as well as more conventional routes.

IFRO coordinators: Ayoe Hoff, Peder Andersen 

Visit the project website here.

PROJEKTET ER AFSLUTTET
Projektperiode: 1. januar 2013 - 30. juni 2017

DNMARK  er en tværfaglig forskningsalliance, der peger på nye ideer til, hvordan man kan optimere brugen af kvælstof. Idéerne skal være bæredygtige forstået på den måde, at de både skal forbedre ressourceeffektiviteten og folkesundheden samt sikre en mindre miljø- og klimabelastning.

DNMARK har modtaget støtte fra Det Strategiske Forskningsråds Programkomite for Sundhed Fødevarer og Velfærd.

Beløb - IFRO: DKK 2.05 mill.

IFRO koordinator: Brian H. Jacobsen

Besøg projektets hjemmeside her.

IFRO Professor Jørgen Dejgård Jensen is leader of a work package that aims at assessing economic sustainability of intervention strategies in livestock and provide support for decision-making by stakeholders and risk managers. The project is part of UC-CARE (University of Copenhagen Research Centre for Control of Antibiotic Resistance) that targets a number of complementary and interactive topics that are central in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

UC-CARE has received funding from UCPH Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research.

IFRO budget: 1.750.000 DKK

Period: 2013-2016

UC-Care provides new knowledge and solutions for enhanced diagnostics and antibiotic therapy of bacterial infections. 

Antibiotics are essential in the cure of bacterial infections  and have significantly contributed to reduce human mortality and improve animal healthcare over the last 50 years. However, antibiotic use in humans and animals has the unavoidable side effect to promote selection of resistant bacteria. The continuous spread of antibiotic resistance combined with the scarcity of new antibiotics requires a coordinated research effort.

UC-CARE is a platform for establishment of the much needed academia-industry partnerships in this area, made possible by a 4-year grant (4,374,174 euro) from the University of Copenhagen. The center is additionally financed with contributions by Zoetis (EURO 300,000), the Department of Veterinary Disease Biology (EURO 200,000), the Department of Food and Resource Economics (EURO 73,000), and The Center for Research in Pig Production and Health (EURO 133,000).

Work Package 5: Cost-benefit analysis and decision support for stakeholders: Main objectives 

Conduct cost-benefit analyses of alternative livestock production strategies to reduce the risk of developing antibiotic resistance in animals and humans,
Policy recommendations regarding economically efficient strategies to reduce or change the use of antibiotics
Identify critical factors for these strategies to be economically efficient and feasible at stakeholder and national level.

Sub projects:

Task 5.1. Biological effects of on-farm risk mitigating strategies

We will investigate biological effects relevant to production economics and human health of on-farm alternative risk mitigating strategies, compared to current practices involving antimicrobial treatment, including practices investigated in WP2 and WP4.

A key aim of the project will be to describe the associations between antibiotics use – and alternative - practices in livestock production on the one hand, and human and animal health risks due to antibiotic resistance on the other, and the development in these associations over time.

Practices to be analysed will be coordinated with WP2 and WP4, in order to enable economic perspectives on the strategies investigated in those two work packages.

The project will include reviews of existing literature, analysis of existing data and risk modelling, and development of partial budgeting model on biological and economic effects of risk mitigation measures at herd level, and the project will provide inputs (e.g. animal and human health risk effect estimates) to the economic analyses in task 5.2.)

Task 5.2. Economic effects of on-farm risk mitigating strategies at farm, sector and society level

A 3-year PhD project will investigate economic effects of on-farm alternative risk mitigating strategies, at farm, sector and society level, based on inputs from task 5.1.

Whereas interest at the farm level is focused on effects affecting farm profitability, including animal growth and mortality, treatment costs and sales prices, analyses at the society level also address human health effects and the derived consequences for health care costs, absenteeism, labour productivity, mortality, etc. The task will address these issues of incentive-compatibility and lead to policy recommendations regarding economic feasibility and incentive-compatibility of alternative strategies to reduce antibiotics resistance risks.

The project will combine findings from existing literature with analysis of farm accounts data, budgeting models on farm-level economic effects of risk mitigation measures, economic modelling of the agricultural sector and cost analysis of human health consequences related to antibiotic resistance.

Furthermore, the project will be in close contact with activities in WP6 (Societal issues & governance) with regard to understanding e.g. the role of economic incentives in livestock producers’ practices regarding animal health care.

External members:

• Jonathan Rushton (Royal Veterinary College, UK)
• Henk Hogeveen (University of Wageningen, NL)
• Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen (IPH)
• Lis Alban (IVS/DAFC)

Demands on European agricultural landscapes are increasing. Food security concerns from a growing global population, increasing demands for low impact diets and for environmental quality of the countryside put multiple, and often conflicting pressures on land resources and management. While short-term agricultural profitability has become better aligned with longer-term sustainability, meeting environmental and climate targets remains among the most pressing European policy issues. As stressed recently by the European Commission, the forthcoming common agricultural policy (CAP) reform will contain an improved delivery model enabling member states to direct more resources towards both mandatory and voluntary instruments to enhance provision of environmental and climate public goods (ibid p. 19). Although the CAP will continue to be a unifying policy, it is being proposed, that member states should be encouraged to adapt or design new policy instruments for national implementation. These should pursue commonly-agreed environmental and climate policy targets, but be better suited to member states’ individual institutional, agricultural and environmental contexts.

Flexible approaches to agri-environmental schemes are already in use across the EU. However, many initiatives are either costly, are too ineffective in boosting environmental and climate service provision, have skewed distributional impacts, increase risks to the farmer, or are too bureaucratic in their implementation triggering excessive transaction costs. It is therefore essential that a package of innovative contractual arrangements is developed and empirically tested, so as to avoid inefficiencies and unintended outcomes. Environmental and agricultural stakeholders need guidance on when and where different contractual arrangements are likely to generate significant impacts in cost-effective ways.

The overarching objective of EFFECT will be to develop a theoretically well-founded and empirically well-adapted package of new contractual frameworks, enabling farmers to reconcile agricultural productivity with enhanced delivery of environmental and climate public goods and services to the benefit of society at large.

Visit the project website here.

Project lead and IFRO coordinator: Professor Mette Termansen

Financed by H2020

Duration: 2019-2023

19 EU research and practice partners

Budget: 5.000.000 EUR

IFRO coordinator: Lotte Holm

Other participants from IFRO:

Thomas Bøker Lund, Sinne Smed

Project description:

Rising food prices and the current economic crisis are core issues on today’s consumer and policy agenda both in Denmark and internationally. How well equipped are we to maintain our private and common welfare in times of economic unrest and climatic change? How well prepared is the population to meet the challenges? In developing future policies and market strategies in the global and national food area it will be paramount not to separate but combine concerns related to  the economy, food security, health, environmental sustainability and welfare. Knowledge of existing reactions, among consumers and key actors in the food sector, to fluctuations and trends in food provision will thus prove indispensable.

FiTT intends to: 1) Investigate existing coping strategies in relation to food budget constraints in different socioeconomic groups and household types; 2) Develop and apply a quantitative tool to measure and monitor the way changes in private economy affect food consumption patterns and the consequences of these changes measured against parameters of health sustainability and life quality.

The project consists of three substudies which are mutually dependent. The work incorporates and draws upon different scientific disciplines and methods. In substudy one a qualitative investigation will be carried out of coping strategies in relation to experienced food budget reductions and fluctuating market prices across different population groups. In substudy two micro analyses of consumer coping strategies are conducted. The analysis will be based on data from GfK (Consumer Tracking Scandinavia), which consists of an unbalanced panel of approximately 2600 food consumers who, on a daily basis, have registered their purchases of food products over the period 1999–2010. The fine-grained quality of the data (close to barcode level) allows us to translate the households’ coping strategies into changes in health and sustainability parameters. Based on the findings from substudy one and two, substudy three involves the design, development and application of a tool in the form of a structured questionnaire to measure and monitor at household level: a) the existence and extent of food budget constraints; b) coping strategies adopted in response to such restraints; and c) the effect of the coping strategies on healthy eating, sustainability in diet and life quality.

It is a further aim of the project to provide a strong basis for future Danish participation in EU projects responding to grand societal challenges connected with climate change, population health, and welfare policy. This project will help Danish researchers to develop important concepts and tools needed for welfare societies to gain valuable experience with research in this area, and also to develop and consolidate an international network of prominent researchers in this field.

The project also involves corporation with scientists from DTU (Technical University of Denmark) Food and Copenhagen Resource Institute.

June 1st 2012 - November 30th 2016

Source of financing:

The Danish Council for Strategic Research Programme Commission on Health, Food and Welfare (Det Strategiske Forskningsråd: Programkomiteen for Sundhed, Fødevarer og Velfærd)

Amount: DKK 6.3 mill. 

EU food consumption research

• Food insecurity is a re-emerging issue in Europe and should be addressed as a substantive topic in the Horizon 2020 programme.
• Fresh perspectives that focus on food consumption are essential if progressive solutions to food-related grand challenges are to be found. Social sciences offer lenses for examining the inter-related food issues in an integrated way.
• Horizon 2020 should call for research which seeks integrated solutions to address several societal challenges simultaneously.
These were in brief the main conclusions from a recent workshop initiated by IFRO researchers in Brussels. See all the recommendations in the workshop report (can be send upon request)where the role of social sciences in meeting challenges in food consumption in Europe is emphasized.

International Advisory Group

Publications from the project

IFRO coordinators:

Lotte Holm, Peter Sandøe, Jørgen Dejgård Jensen

Short description of UNIK:

The occurrence of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes and related cardiovascular disorders has increased dramatically over the last couple of decades and appears to keep on rising globally with staggering social and economical consequences. The reason for this is unclear, but it appears to be related mainly to a general change in lifestyle towards poor eating habits and lack of physical activity, importantly combined with genes predisposing for these diseases. The present UNIK is a cross-disciplinary research program aiming at identifying and characterizing the environmental and genetic causes of lifestyle diseases and at developing new means for preventing and curing these. The program will exploit the strong synergistic possibilities generated by the recent university merger bringing world-class scientists covering multiple different aspects of lifestyle diseases together in one organization. Major research themes of the program are:

• food components and how they release satiety and hunger hormones from the gastrointestinal tract and controls our metabolism,
• how these hormones can be used as new drugs,
• the molecular basis for the health promoting effect of physical activity in muscle,
• the genetic basis for why some people get obese or get diabetes and others do not,
• social and psychological factors leading to poor lifestyle, and
• the reason why people cannot change their obvious bad lifestyle.

It is the ambitious goal of the program based on top quality research to develop better, health-promoting food; optimal fitness programs; novel and efficient regimens for changing people’s lifestyle; and new and better pharmaceuticals - all to help combat the global epidemic of lifestyle disease.

UNIK is a large research project between research groups from 17 different institutes at 7 faculties and was made possible by a unique form of granting, paving the way for a novel synergistic research approach.

IFRO is participating in the following sub-projects:

Projekt 23: Changing discourses and strategies in the fight against life-style related diseases

Jesper Lassen, Peter Sandøe

Overall aim: The project will analyse and discuss how the notion of life-style related diseases has developed historically and how it links to strategies to prevent and cure such diseases in order to identify ethical, social and health political dilemmas underlying contemporary attempts to fight life-style diseases. The project will provide a research based input to the public debate and on how to develop preventive health strategies that are efficient, medically responsible, increase equity and respect towards the autonomy of citizens, and thus qualify the basis for future decisions about policies and technologies.

Project 24: (Un)healthy bodies – health discourses and physical (in)activity among Danish adults

Lotte Holm

Overall aim: Activity patterns in different population groups are identified and analysed in relation to different understandings of health discourses, different sport experiences and attitudes towards physical activity as well as eating practices.

Projekt 25: Public and market regulation in the fight against life-style diseases – Opportunities and barriers

Jørgen Dejgård Jensen

Overall aim: The effect of various regulatory measures on the implementation of public health policies related to life-style diseases are analysed and it is assessed how regulatory measures can best be used to support such public health policies.

Project 26: Social-Psychological Interventions and Experiments for Effective Life Style Changes

Lotte Holm, Jesper Lassen

Overall aim: The effectiveness of social-psychological intervention methods for life style changes is evaluated through randomised clinical trials testing rival and/or combined hypotheses concerning the merit of biological and social interventions.

01 September 2009 - 31 December 2015

Financing: Styrelsen for Forskning og Innovation (The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation)

Amount: DKK 3.96 mill. (IFRO share)

A comparative survey of change and stability in eating patterns

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 1 March 2011 - 31 March 2014

About the project

This project investigates the everyday eating practices of four Nordic populations. How do people in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden organise their daily eating? The aim is to understand modern living in more depth and to find out whether eating today is highly individualised largely neglecting old habits and norms regarding proper eating – or, whether these traditions still prevail.

The study of change and variation in food habits is an entrance to explore wider social themes, such as how modern living is structured by time rhythms and organisation of society, how social relations are coordinated, how identity is reflected in daily consumption, how norms may differ from practices and how men and women differ with respect to daily habits and routines.

Current structures and emerging patterns in food purchase (e.g., convenience food), domestic food preparation, and eating away from home are critical not only for the development of new food products or service systems but also for public policies addressing both health and environmental issues.

The project will investigate the acquisition, preparation, timing, presentation, location, companionship, and selection of food using survey methodology including representative samples of four Nordic populations.

In addition, the study aims at methodological development to capture trends and social variations in eating patterns over time. It will link up to an earlier Nordic study from 1997, and thus offers a unique opportunity to study social change within a central area of contemporary consumption.

Nordic eating has received funding from NORDCORP.

Amount: EUR 598.441

IFRO coordinator: Lotte Holm 

Participants 

• Thomas Bøker Lund
• Jukka Gronow
• Unni Kjærnes
• Johanna Mäkelä
• Mari Niva
• Marianne Pipping Ekström

Project related material
In Danish: "Måltider er vigtige"

Scientific publications:

• Everyday eating in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden: A comparative study of meal patterns 1997-2012
• Associations between meal complexity and social context in four Nordic countries
• The prevalence and risk of food insecurity in the Nordic Region: Preliminary results
• The food we eat in Nordic countries: some changes between 1997 and 2012
• The context and conduct of eating in Nordic countries: some changes between 1997 and 2012
• Is there a link between eating practices and dietary health?
• Who is cooking dinner? Gender and cooking in the Nordic countries – 1997 and 2012
• Convenience food consumption in Nordic countries – and in the St Petersburg area
• The modernisation of Nordic eating : studying changes and stabilities in eating patterns
• Remarkable stability in the daily eating rhythm in the Nordic countries
• Sustainable food consumption in Nordic countries: Positive attitudes but varied activities

Other materials:

• Everyday Eating in Four Nordic Countries: Questionnaire for 2012
• Report about data collection and data quality

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 01 September 2012 - 31 December 2015

The research unit investigates the process of state formation and fragmentation in developing societies. We study this apparently incongruous process through a focus on local politics and the social production of property and citizenship.

The research unit investigates the process of state formation and fragmentation in developing societies. We study this apparently incongruous process through a focus on local politics and the social production of property and citizenship. Conventional state theories, modeled after developed societies, see state institutions as a source of hegemony. We investigate how hegemonic struggles over the power to determine the parameters of property and citizenship create moments of sovereignty and form different institutions with state quality. It is in the creation of the political delineations of two fundamental aspects of social life: what we can have, and who we are - property and citizenship - that state quality is produced. The focus is the political, social and developmental consequences where states have limited empirical sovereignty and where states have been forced to cede ground to competing non-state forms of authority. We undertake field research in rural, peri-urban and urban contexts in Benin, Ghana, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Zimbabwe.

IFRO coordinator: Christian Lund

ProCit has received funding from Det Frie Forskningsråd, Samfund og Erhverv (The Danish Council for Independent Research)

Amount: DKK 3.5 mill.

Applying Choice Experiments and the Theory of Planned Behavior to Assess Determinants of Demand

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 801199.

Period:  March 2019 – February 2022.

IFRO coordinators: Martin Reinhardt Nielsen, Jette Bredahl Jacobsen

Illegal trade in wildlife products poses a significant threat to biodiversity conservation. The wildlife trade is also known to finance violence, contribute to destabilising national security, and hampers economic development in source countries. The trade in rhino horn is considered one of the most organized crimes, fueled by growing demand in Asia. This demand has contributed to pushing remaining wild rhino populations to the brink of extinction.

Meanwhile the question of whether a total ban or a tightly regulated trade is the most effective means of regulation is heatedly debated. However, no study has explicitly examined consumers’ preferences and trade-offs for these two options. Moreover, despite the urgency of understanding the drivers of demand the relative importance of the attributes of consumer’s choice to purchase rhino horn remains unclear.

This project aims to examine these questions based on an existing sample of rhino horn consumers in Vietnam. A literature review and interviews with key informants using the Consumer Culture Theory as a framework will be applied to explore the aspects of Asian culture and consumerism that drive rhino horn consumption. The project will also apply the Theory of Planned Behavior to obtain a detailed understanding of the socio-psychological processes and motivational drivers of rhino horn consumption. Finally, a choice experiment design will be developed to evaluate what interventions most effectively will reduce demand for rhino horn and to assess under which conditions people will comply with a ban on non-licensed rhino horn trade if a legal trade was established.

This study will provide crucial information for designing behavioural modification campaigns for the conservation of rhinos and constitute an important academic contribution to the understanding of Asian culture and consumerism in relation to wildlife products. The methodology and insights developed in this study will furthermore be applicable to investigating preferences and consumer behaviour towards other illicit products.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: January 2014 - December 2017

IFRO coordinator: Søren Bøye Olsen

GREEiNSECT, a consortium of public and private institutions, aims to investigate how insects can be utilized as novel and supplementary sources of protein by means of mass production in small- to large-scale industries in Kenya. By studying their applications to food, nutritional, and feed security, as well as their economic and social acceptance, GREEiNSECT aims to demonstrate the use of insects as a concrete tool for developing a new, sustainable and inclusive component of the food and feed sector.

GREEiNSECT is organized through work packages addressing: 1) technological development, adoption and adaption capabilities of insects for feed and food, and investigation of operational and implementable business models; 2) creation of the foundation for development of institutional frameworks necessary for managing the risk of disease in the reared insects, humans and animals related to mass rearing systems, and international trade and food security standards; 3) modeling and assessing contribution of insect production systems to green economic growth and nutrition security, and exploring economic and political incentives for the development of climate-friendly food and feed sector; 4) capacity building of Kenyan research institutions and dissemination of knowledge gained; and 5)  development of a Kenya-based knowledge platform involving public and private sectors.

Furthermore, international partners from SE Asia will advance the progress of the project through their experiences with the edible insect sector. International knowledge dissemination will be supported by FAO.

GREEiNSECT has received funding from Danida

Amount total: DKK 10.0 mill 

IFRO share: DKK 2.1 mill 

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 1 April 2012 - 31 March 2016

INEMAD is an international consortium composed of 13 partners from academia, government research labs, a local authority linked organisation, a sector organisation and several small and medium sized enterprices.

INEMAD will concentrate on innovative strategies to reconnect livestock and crop production farming systems. New flows of energy and materials within the agricultural sector (or linked to the agricultural sector) will be analysed and will create opportunities for re-thinking the relation between crop and livestock production. Various options to cope with recycling, greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, and bio-based economy will need an integral assessment on energy and nutrient flows and will cause new arrangements between firms, land use and land management. INEMAD will address the question of what new methods and how new arrangements should be developed to restore the recycling within the specialisation context.

To realize these ambitions, the leading principle of INEMAD is a triangular enlargement of the traditional farming systems with a “processing” system. Processing is proposed as a third system, to be linked with crop and the livestock production, in order to increase agricultural productivity while reducing external energy input and closing nutrient cycle. Nutrient recycling can be done by biogas production and the use of digestate as fertilizer. Digestate can not only replace the manure but also chemical fertiliser because of its comparable properties. INEMAD will analyse improvements options for biogas plants, valorisation options for the digestate, improve the management by the use of optimisation models and compare organisational structures.

IFRO project coordinator: Brian H. Jacobsen

INEMAD has received funding from the EU 7th Framework Programme

Amount - IFRO share: DKK 2.4 mill.

How to increase the reliability of copepods as live prey in Danish fish farms?

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 01 January 2011 - 31 December 2015

IFRO coordinator: Max Nielsen

IMPAQ has received funding from The Danish Council for Strategic Research: Programme Commission on Health, Food and Welfare (Det Strategiske Forskningsråd: Programkomiteen for Sundhed, Fødevarer og Velfærd)

Amount: DKK 2.0 mill. 

This multi-disciplinary research project aims at increasing the sustainability of the Danish small scale aquaculture farms producing high-added value fish. We propose to improve the already leading know-how on live-feed production that Denmark is reputed for by establishing collaboration on copepod cultivation between research institutions and private enterprises (SMEs).

Solving challenges and using a research based platform in the aquaculture fish fry production sector will position Danish aquaculture in the league of top performers. This project will offer: a potential access to new cultured high priced fish species, fish of better quality, an improved fish wellness using natural diet, all for the benefit of Danish interests.

Copepods are an alternative or supplementary food to the classical live feed organisms rotifers and Artemia in marine fish hatcheries. Their use is known to improve survival, growth, and development of fish larvae. Copepods are exploited successfully in extensive systems, but to our knowledge only in Scandinavia and in Taiwan.

In Denmark between 500,000 and 1,000,000 fry of turbot are produced every year on copepods solely. The present consortium will provide SME’s with technical and genetic improvements of their present or future copepod cultures, an understanding and conversion of co-existing organisms that have been considered as nuisance in copepod cultures into beneficial food components, a research based challenge of the automatised cultures limitations due to copepod density effects, tests of automatised copepod systems in fish feeding trials, and finally a proper economic assessment of the use of copepods as live prey in aquaculture.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 1 January 2012 - 30 June 2016

IFRO coordinator: Lars Gårn Hansen

INCAP has received funding from Det Strategiske Forskningsråd (The Danish Council for Strategic Research)

Amount: DKK 17.944.648 

The integration of wind energy can be facilitated through the automatic control of home appliances. Through randomized field trials, the project aims to investigate consumer reactions to offers of variable prices and ‘automatic’ control. The idea is to map consumer barriers, motives and behaviour in order to make it possible to design more targeted and effective control measures and initiatives.

Contact:

• Carsten Lynge Jensen (IFRO, University of Copenhagen)
• Per Nørgaard (DTU Elektro)
• Poul Erik Morthorst (DTU Management)
• Erik Jørgensen (SydEnergi)
• Dorthe Gårdbo-Pedersen (Develco)
• Frank Wolak (Stanford University, USA)

This research project explores the microfoundations that underlie the transmission of knowledge from university to industry and that will ultimately lead to socioeconomic impact.

Short description

Based on changing macro- and microeconomic conditions, there is a growing recognition that companies are increasingly moving towards open innovation models that more heavily rely on external sources of knowledge. With universities being a particularly important source of external knowledge for innovation, university-industry relations get to the center stage of corporate innovation processes. As such, a large part of the socioeconomic impact of university research is established through university-industry relations, which can take place through a wide variety of different knowledge transmission channels. However, the more detailed mechanisms that underlie these channels and how they ultimately lead to socioeconomic impact are not fully understood. We propose that a microfoundations perspective can provide important insights into how the individual-level decisions, actions and interactions can aggregate to macro-level impact. In this research project, we therefore explore the microfoundations that underlie the transmission of knowledge from university to industry and that will ultimately lead to socioeconomic impact.

Our research plan consists of a three-stage research design. First, we conduct an in-depth case study of the Faculty of Science (SCIENCE) at the University of Copenhagen to uncover how institutional conditions and individual actions and interactions affect knowledge transmission mechanisms of researchers. Second, we conduct a longitudinal ethnography of selected researchers at the Faculty of Science to unravel the detailed processes and microfoundational aspects of how these researchers engage with industry. Third, we conduct a controlled policy capturing experiment with university researchers and company employees to validate the underlying mechanisms of university-industry collaboration by investigating the decision-making criteria to engage with industry.

IFRO coordinator: Marcel Bogers, Professor

Involved IFRO researchers:

• Karin Beukel, Assistant Professor
• Maral Mahdad, Postdoc
• Elena Tavella, Assistant Professor
• Toke Reinholt Fosgaard, Associate Professor
• Gergana Romanova, PhD student
• Sunny Mosangzi Xu, PhD student
• Alice Pizzo, PhD student

Project partners

• Erik Bisgaard Madsen, Vice-Dean of Private and Public Sector Services, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
• Jeannette Colyvas, Associate Professor, Northwestern University
• Pablo D’Este, Research Fellow, Spanish Council for Scientific Research
• Maria Theresa Norn, Head of Analysis, DEA
• Beverly Tyler, Professor, North Carolina State University

Time frame: January 2017 - December 2020

Source of financing: Novo Nordisk Foundation

Amount: DKK 10 million

PROJEKTET ER AFSLUTTET
Projektperiode: 1. januar 2011 - 31. december 2015

Dette projekt handler om jagt- og vildtforvaltningens praksis i et samfundsmæssigt perspektiv.

Projektet har modtaget støtte fra 15. Juni Fonden

Beløb: DKK 6.0 mill.

Rammevilkårene for jagt- samt vildt- og landskabsforvaltningen er under stadig forandring. Det gælder bl.a. i forhold til mål for naturbeskyttelse og rekreation men også i forhold til udviklingen i landbruget, der betyder, at stadig færre får det daglige forvaltningsansvar, herunder for jagtretten, over stadig større områder. Forandringerne rummer på den ene side muligheder, ikke blot for ejere og forvaltere, men også for resten af befolkningen. På den anden side er det tydeligt, at disse forandringer også giver anledning til konflikter mellem forskellige interesser og til brydning af forskellige syn på naturen og brugen af den, herunder retten til at jage. Disse forandringer har betydning for de valg, som jægere og lodsejere træffer (fx biotopetablering i det åbne land eller undladelse af hegning kulturarealer i skovene), og som omverdenen forholder sig til.

For at opnå en mere robust jagt- og vildtforvaltning er der behov for viden om, hvad praksis reelt er, og hvordan den kan forbedres (fx vildtvenlig foryngelse), hvilke hensyn praksis afspejler, og hvordan den påvirkes af fx tilskudsordninger eller lovgivning. Det er også centralt at afdække konfliktmønstre mellem bl.a. jægere og befolkningen og kunne sætte ord på grundlæggende værdier, fx i forhold til dyreetik, for bedre at kunne forstå og håndtere forskelle mellem grupper.

Projektet dækker derfor to overordnede temaer:

a) Vildt- og landskabsforvaltning i praksis
Dette tema beskæftiger sig med at forstå, hvilke faktorer der påvirker vildt- og landskabsforvaltning. Fokus er på at forstå hvad praksis reelt er, hvordan den kan forbedres (fx vildtvenlig foryngelse), og hvilke forhold der påvirker den, fx lovgivning, tilskudsordninger, viden, økonomi og fysiske forhold i landskabet.

b) Jagt, etik, værdier og konflikt
Dette tema beskæftiger sig med at forstå, hvordan konflikter opstår, forebygges, og håndteres, samt med at skaffe indsigt i de centrale natur- og dyreetiske problemstillinger i forhold til jagt- og vildtforvaltning. Fokus er på at forstå, hvilke konflikter, der opstår mellem lodsejere, jægere og andre brugere af landskabet og hvordan disse påvirkes af jagtens praksis og den bredere befolknings natur- og dyreetiske værdier. 

Deltagere:

• Palle Madsen (Geoscience)
• Frank Søndergaard Jensen (Geoscience)
• Bo Jellesmark Thorsen (IFRO)
• Jens Emborg (IFRO)
• Christian Gamborg (IFRO)
• Peter Sandøe (IFRO)

Populærvidenskabelige artikler med basis i projektet:

1. Lund, J.F., F.S.J. Jensen, J. Emborg, C. Gamborg, P. Madsen og B. J. Thorsen 2012. Bedre vilkår for vildt og biodiversitet i det danske landskab. SKOVEN 2012/01: 12-16.
2. Gamborg, C., F.S., Jensen, J. Emborg, J.F. Lund, P. Madsen og B. J. Thorsen 2012. Kender du typen? SKOVEN 2012/02: 80-84.
3. Madsen, P. og Madsen, T.L. 2013. Alternativer til almindeligt stålgærde? SKOVEN 2013/08: 326-329.
4. Jensen, F.S., J.F. Lund, J. Emborg, C. Gamborg, P. Madsen, B. J. Thorsen og T. Tvedt 2013. Lodsejerne gør en aktiv indsats for vildt og jagt. SKOVEN 2013/10: 442-444.
5. Lund, J.F., F.S.J. Jensen, J. Emborg, C. Gamborg, P. Madsen og B. J. Thorsen 2013. Hvad gør jægerne for vildt og natur i landskabet? JÆGER 08: 54-57.
6. Gamborg, C., F.S. Jensen, J.F. Lund, J. Emborg, P. Madsen og B. J. Thorsen 2014. Fasaner, gråænder og agerhøns – en udsat del af jagten og vildtforvaltningen. SKOVEN 2014.
7. Gamborg, C., F.S. Jensen, J.F. Lund, J. Emborg, P. Madsen og B. J. Thorsen 2014. Noget for noget? Holdninger til vildtpleje og regulering af udsætning. SKOVEN 2014.

Rapport:

Gamborg, C., Jensen, F.S., Lund, J.F. & Thorsen, B.J. 2014. Holdninger til jagt og udsætning af fuglevildt – resultater fra en landsdækkende spørgeskemaundersøgelse blandt befolkningen, lodsejere og jægere. IFRO Dokumentation 2014/1. ISBN: 978-87-92591-45-6

The LEAKS project is a collaborative project which investigates moments of spill-over in which materialities and their attendant knowledges leak from specific sites of capital investment, or are reconfigured into new social, political and territorial assemblages. LEAKS directs the attention to new political spaces in the vicinity of extractive industries through careful ethnographic scrutiny of three cases of hydrocarbons extraction in Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador.

IFRO researcher: Mattias Borg Rasmussen

Other participants: Associate Professor Stine Krøijer, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

LEAP aims to develop a unified framework that explicitly incorporates agricultural nutrient legacies and time lags into adaptive management strategies to protect water resources under changing climate and land use. The research will integrate the following three components:

• Biophysical: LEAP will fill key knowledge gaps and develop watershed-scale nutrient modelling tools necessary to determining impacts of historical land-use patterns on current nutrient loading to surface and groundwater.
• Economic: LEAP will account for trade-offs between initial costs of BMP implementation and delayed benefits of water quality improvements by evaluating appropriate discounting methods.
• Policy: by quantifying nutrient legacies and associated lag times, LEAP will help select appropriate (site-specific) BMPs and establish nutrient reduction goals within realistic time frames

Description

Widespread nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertiliser use threatens water quality and aquatic ecosystems. Agricultural best management practices (BMPs) have been implemented in an attempt to improve water quality, but time lags between BMP implementation and measurable water quality benefits are frequently observed. One reason is the slow release of N and P from legacy nutrient stores that accumulated in the landscape over decades of fertiliser application. At present, we continue to lack: (a) a comprehensive characterisation of the nature, size and reactivity of agricultural N and P legacies, (b) integrated modelling tools to predict the timing and magnitude of water quality improvements achievable through BMPs, and (c) policy instruments that acknowledge time lags and balance trade-offs between short and long-term costs, benefits and risks.
LEAP aims to gain a predictive understanding of the release of nutrients over time and how they move and transform within water systems and address the knowledge gaps. The project objectives are:

• Identify key controls on the accumulation and mobilisation of agricultural N and P legacies, and predict time lags between implementation of BMPs and reductions in nutrient loadings to ground and surface waters, as a function of climate, land cover, land use, and land management;
• Assess outcomes of alternative management strategies by performing cost-benefit analyses within a hydro-economic modelling framework that explicitly represents nutrient legacies;
• Develop a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) framework to evaluate uncertainties in both biophysical and hydro-economic modelling of nutrient legacies, and assess their implications for nutrient risk management;
• Create an agro-ecosystem typology – based on EU and Canadian exemplars– that links biophysical and socioeconomic drivers of non-point source pollution to water quality impacts; and
• Inform adaptive agro-environmental water management practices that target mitigation of water quality impacts of N and P legacies by assessing trade-offs between short and long-term costs, benefits and risks.

Read more

• Legacies of Agricultural Pollutants
  Reconciling Agriculture and Water Quality

IFRO Project coordinator

Søren Bøye Olsen

IFRO Project participants

Anne Kejser Jensen and Brian H. Jacobsen

Project Organisation

Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen

Project Partners and Institution

Jerker Jarsjö, Stockholm University
Søren Bøye Olsen, University of Copenhagen
Maria Cunha, University of Coimbra
Nandita Basu, University of Waterloo

Period: April 2017 - April 2020

Financing source

The 2016 Joint Call is funded under WaterWorks2015, which is supported by the European Commission (EC). WaterWorks2015 aims at tackling water challenges at European and international levels through the development of transnational and transdisciplinary research and innovation actions.

WATER JPI are intergovernmental initiatives aiming at strengthening European leadership and competitiveness in Research Development and Innovation, while at the same time harmonizing and mobilizing National and Regional RDI Programs. In Denmark the funding comes from the Danish Innovation Fund.

Amount

Total: DKK 12,2 million
IFRO share: DKK 3,0 million

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 01 March 2012 - 28 February 2016

MYFISH will provide definitions of MSY variants which maximize other measuers of 'yield' than biomass and which account for the fact that singe species rarely exist in isolation. Further, MYFISH will redefine the term 'sustainable' to signify that Good Environmental Status (MSFD) is achived and economically and socially unacceptable situations are avoided, all with acceptable levels of risk. In short, MYFISH aims at integrating the MSY concept with the overarching principals of the CFP: the precautionary and the ecosystem approach. MYFISH will achieve this objective through addressing fisheries in all RAC areas and integrating stakeholders (the fishing industry, NGOs and managers) throughout the project.

MYFISH has received funding from the EU 7th Framework programme (The FP7 funding programme ran from 2007 to 2013.)

Amount: DKK 1.3 mill.

IFRO project coordinator: Ayoe Hoff

Nem øko-plantemad: Virksomheders syn på muligheder og udfordringer ved at lancere økologiske, plantebaserede convenience-produkter til detailhandlen

IFRO koordinator: Mette Weinreich Hansen

Formålet med dette projekt er at kvalificere fremtidens økologiske plantebaserede convenience-produkter. Hvor ligger de største udfordringer og muligheder ifølge forarbejdningsvirksomhederne selv?

Besøg projekthjemmesiden her.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 1 January 2010 - 31 December 2013

About the project:

Nitrate leaching from agricultural areas is one of the major water resources management problems in Denmark. The efficiency of the existing general regulations is in average only 1/3, because 2/3 of the nitrate leaching from the root zone is reduced in the subsurface before reaching the streams. Today it is impossible to differentiate between vulnerable areas from where nitrate leaching reaches the surface water with very little reduction and robust areas where almost all leached nitrate is reduced. This is a serious constraint for designing cost-effective water management measures.

NICA will develop tools for assessing nitrate reduction in the subsurface between the root zone and the streams and methodologies for assessing at which spatial scales such tools have predictive capabilities. A new instrument will be developed for airborne geophysical measurements, MiniSkyTEM, dedicated for identifying geological structures and heterogeneities in the upper 30 m. Furthermore, a new geophysical method, MRS, will be introduced and the two novel geophysical methods will be tested against field data. State-of-the-art and novel hydrological models (DAISY, MIKE SHE/MIKE11, HydroGeoSphere, RWHET) will be applied and the effect of geological heterogeneity will be analysed by use of stochastic geological realisations using TProGS. A new concept, Representative Elementary Scale (RES), will be developed for assessing the minimum scale at which models, with a given data input, potentially have predictive capabilities. The studies will be conducted in a 5 km2, densely instrumented catchment (Lillebæk) and tested in a 100 km2 catchment (Norsminde Fjord), where farmers and authorities will be actively involved in evaluating possible measures for reducing the nitrate load to surface water in a cost-effective manner. The economic gain from a cost efficient location of the measures will be evaluated.

IFRO project coordinator: Brian H. Jacobsen

IFRO project coordinator: Rebecca L. Rutt

About the project

The Project 2016 “Online and blended learning” (OBL) aims to provide teachers at the University of Copenhagen with increased possibilities to use online and blended learning to create engaging and flexible education, for the benefit of students' learning outcomes. Specific objectives are to raise internal competences, create new and further develop education strategies and courses, and disseminate through new networks and activities.

One component of the OBL Project, entitled ‘Raising competencies and the organizational infrastructure across UCPH’, is being implemented by the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO) together with the Faculty of Theology, the SAXO Institute at the Faculty of Humanities and the SCIENCE IT Learning Centre.

This component has the ambition of increasing Faculty pedagogical and practical knowledge of the opportunities in increasing the use of online activities in current and upcoming courses at UCPH.

Here at IFRO, we are running a lecture series called “20 minute talks”, hosting hands-on walk-in workshops, inviting teachers for individual or group talks about how face-to-face and online activities could complement each other for enhanced student learning, and generating informative pamphlets, amongst other activities.

This website will continue to be updated with new lectures in the series, videos of our lecture series in case you weren’t able to join, links to our pamphlets, and more.

You can learn more about the OBL project on the SCIENCE IT Learning Center websites.

• WP1 Food preferences and influence of changes in olfactory function and flavour
  memory on food acceptability
• WP2 Meal systems development
• WP3 Ethnographic observation and adaptability to IT tools for meal engagement
  
• WP4 Economic and environmental aspects for changing diet scenarios
• WP5 Administration, integration, communication and dissemination

WP 4 - Economic and environmental aspects for changing diet scenarios

IFRO Professor Jørgen Dejgård Jensen is the leader of WP4 that includes five tasks with associated overall objectives:

Hypotheses:
1) Individual meals with high sensory satisfaction yield economic benefits to the
users and to society; 2) Individual meals with high sensory satisfaction provide environmental
benefits due to lower food waste; and 3) Economic optimization of supply chains for individualised
meals can enable supply at a relatively small cost increase.

Task 4.1. Costs and environmental impacts of different meal components. Based on data and
findings from previous research projects (e.g. OPUS, SensWell) and from the literature, meals
systems will be characterised in terms of costs, environmental impacts/cost. The findings serve as
inputs to Task 2.1.

Task 4.2. Economic supply chain model for individualized meal supplies to the elderly. An
economic model will be developed to represent economic aspects in separate stages in the supply
chain: meal preparation (coordinated with WP2) with focus on costs of ingredients and processing
costs (Jensen et al., 2012) and transportation/logistics focusing on the role of product diversity
and associated services in the minimization of transportation costs (M4.3), based on a
mathematical programming methodology (Jensen et al., 2013) and data from project partners
(e.g. Sub1.Copenhagen Food House) (M4.2).

Task 4.3. Prepare the specific environmental model for ELDORADO. Existing tool for Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) (Simapro and Stepwise) and databases established in previous projects will be
developed for assessment of environmental consequences of alternative strategies for meal supply
to the elderly, including e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, land use etc.)
Task 4.4. Estimate economic benefits of improved nutrition of the elderly (coordinated with WP3)
Modelling relationships between food intake and health/well-being, and economic benefits derived
therefrom, based on data from the literature and from the Danish elderly care sector (M4.5).

Task 4.5. Calculate environmental impact and associated socio-economic consequences. The LCA
tool developed in Task 4.2 will be used for calculating environmental impacts of alternative
strategies for meal supply to the elderly (coordinated with Task 4.3) – in physical as well as in
monetary units.

Outcome: The work package will yield important scientific and practical insights in the economic
incentives and barriers related to quality in the supply of welfare services, as well as the economic
and environmental impacts of improved quality in meal supplies in elderly home-care

Findings and results:

The ultimate goal of the project is to provide Danish municipalities with better knowledge and tools for optimising the acceptance of catered meals for elderly in home-care to prevent under-nutrition. Thus preparing them to become more effective for the greater demand on “meals-on-wheels” in the near future.

ELDORADO expects to deliver new knowledge on food acceptance in the elderly, tools for stimulating food intake and well-being as well as know-how on composing meals to achieve optimal consumption levels in the elderly to prevent under-nutrition. Over the project period three PhDs and four postdoctoral fellowships will be completed and 14 to 18 scientific papers with peer review are expected. Research finding will be presented at national and international meetings while interim reports will be made available to the project group and participating municipalities. Interactions and exchanges with other national and international projects on elderly (including CALM and two Swedish projects) will be encouraged. Better food and practices to engage in eating of the elderly in home-care situations is expected to contribute to quality of life thus “life for years” not “years to life”. Understanding individual differences among elderly can further give inspiration to new actions within individualized health prevention and health promotion that will be more sustainable and economic achievable for Denmark

RARE investigated how pastoralists’ adaptation strategies interact with changing land uses, land conflicts, and new land law reforms, and what the implications are for efforts to support resilient rural development in Kenya.

The development objective was to ensure secure and peaceful access to land for climate change adaptation and thereby the resilience of all Kenyan citizens.

IFRO coordinator: Iben Nathan

Funding: Danida Fellowship Centre DKK 9,999,088

Period: 2018 - 2023

Visit the project website here.

Rule and Rupture: State formation through the local production of property and citizenship

Professor Christian Lund, head of the Section for Global Development heads this Advanced Grant from the ERC - European Research Council.

Christian Lund describes his project in this way:

"The key concern of the research is how political power is established and reproduced through the production of the fundamental social contracts of property and citizenship. We will re-define the research on so-called failed and weak states, by examining what political authority is actually exercised rather than measuring how they fall short of theoretical ideals.

In developing countries with legal and institutional pluralism, no single institution exercises the political authority as such. Different institutions compete to define and enforce rights to property and citizenship. This is most visible at the local level, yet it has implications for theorizing the state as such. Hence, investigating the social production of property and citizenship is a way to study state formation. We study local institutions that exercise political authority and govern access to resources, and recognition of these rights. What institution guarantees what claims as rights, and, especially, how, is crucial, as it leads to the recognition of that particular institution as a political authority. We therefore study statutory as well as non-statutory institutions. We are not simply looking for property deeds and passports etc. issued by statutory government as measurements of political authority. Rather, we look for secondary forms of recognition ‘issued’ by non-statutory institutions that represent mutual acknowledgements of claims even without a narrow legal endorsement. Dynamics such as these are fundamental for a concise understanding of developing country state formation processes.

Eight country studies with rural and urban field sites will be conducted. We focus on concrete controversies. We collect data at several levels and from different sources, including resident groups, land users, local civil servants, local politicians and business-owners, as well as large-scale contractors, municipal politicians and administrators."

The overall goal of SCIFOR is participatory forestry planning and management practices that support equitable, environmentally sound, and economically rational forest management. The project involves investigations of management planning practices and outcomes in Nepal’s community forests and in forests managed under Participatory Forest Management in Tanzania.

IFRO project coordinator: Jens Friis Lund

Project participants:

• Yonika Ngaga, Tanzania project coordinator, Faculty of Forestry and Nature Conservation (FFNC), Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania
• Gimbale Mbeyale, FFNC, SUA
• Santosh Rayamajhi, Nepal project coordinator, The Institute of Forestry (IOF), Tribhuvan University (TU)
• Bir Bahadur Khanal Chhetri, IOF, TU
• Ridish Pokharel, IOF, TU
• Michael Eilenberg, Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark.
• Thorsten Treue, Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen (KU), Denmark.
• Christian Pilegaard Hansen, IFRO, KU.
• Henrik Meilby, IFRO, KU.
• Christian Lund, IFRO, KU.

Short description:

With the purposes of improving forest conservation as well as rural peoples’ livelihoods in less developed countries, local communities are increasingly becoming involved in managing forests. Yet, evidence that these purposes are met is scarce, and the reason seems to be associated with the conditions under which rural people are, in practice, allowed to participate. Justified by concerns over (lacking) forest management skills among local communities, forest bureaucracies are reluctant to transfer forest management rights to rural people. Scientific forest management plans (SFMPs) that are prepared by professional foresters and endorsed by forest authorities are, thus, often a precondition for participation. Unfortunately, the elaboration of such SFMPs is costly and time consuming and tends to over-burden cash and resource strained forest bureaucracies as well as local communities, thus hampering the spread of participatory forestry. Further, in some cases, it seems that forest bureaucracies justify delays in handing over of rights to valuable forest resources to communities with lacking SFMPs only to remain in control over lucrative resources. At community level, SFMPs may promote elite capture while serving little purpose in actual forest management. Paradoxically, the requirement of costly SFMPs, thus, appears an obstacle to implement and fulfill the purposes of people’s participation. Accordingly, SCIFOR aims to investigate the justifications, functions and values of SFMPs from the perspectives of forest bureaucracies and local communities. The project will do this in Tanzania and Nepal where participatory forestry arrangements form corner stones of national forest policies. The aim is to develop and promote participatory forestry approaches that, in practice, support equitable, environmentally sound, and economically rational forest management.

Period:

January 2014 - December 2017

Financing source:

Danida, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Amount:

Total: DKK 9.0 mill
IFRO share: DKK 4.1 mill

Project period: 1 January 2015 – 31 December 2021

Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, through Danida

Total budget: 9,998,822 DKK

Description

In this research project, we develop and apply an interdisciplinary framework for assessing and comparing environmental, economic, and social sustainability of cotton production in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our analysis includes several currently practiced organic and conventional ways of cotton production as well as some innovative—potentially more sustainable—ways of cotton production. Sustainability is assessed by several indicators, e.g. pesticide residues, soil fertility, greenhouse gas emissions, competitiveness, income and employment generation, and social conditions along the value chains. The empirical studies are conducted in Benin and Tanzania, representing West and East Africa, respectively.

Project Coordinator: Arne Henningsen, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen

• Arne Henningsen
• Christian Elleby

Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen:

• Marianne Nylandsted Larsen

Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University:

• Jørgen Eivind Olesen

• Inge S. Fomsgaard

• Isik Öztürk

Laboratory of Social Dynamics and Development Studies (LADYD), University of Abomey-Calavi (UAC):

• Roch L. Mongbo

• Anne Floquet

Laboratory of Biomathematics and Forest estimations (LaBEF), Faculty of Agronomic Sciences, University of Abomey-Calavi (UAC):

• Romain Glele Kakaï

• Eclou Innocent Senade Benjamin (PhD student)

National High School of Agricultural Sciences and Technologies, University of Parakou:

• Epiphane Sodjinou

• Ghislain Boris Aïhounton (PhD student)

National Institute of Agricultural Research in Benin (INRAB):

• Attanda Mouinou Igué

Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA):

• Joseph Hella

• Michael Baha (PhD student)

Department of Soil Science, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA):

• Nyambilila Amuri

• Thomas Bwana (PhD student)

Publications 

a) Aihounton, G.B.D. and Henningsen, A. (2021): Units of Measurement and

the Inverse Hyperbolic Sine Transformation. The Econometrics Journal

24(2), p. 334–351. https://doi.org/10.1093/ectj/utaa032

b) Bwana, T.N., Amuri, N.A., Semu, E., Elsgaard, L., Butterbach-Bahl,

K., Pelster, D.E., Olesen, J.E. (2021): Soil N2O emission from organic

and conventional cotton farming in Northern Tanzania. Science of The

Total Environment 785, 147301.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147301

c) Bwana, Thomas N., Nyambilila A. Amuri, Ernest Semu, Jørgen E. Olesen,

Arne Henningsen, Michael R. Baha, and Joseph Hella (2020): Yield and

Profitability of Cotton Grown Under Smallholder Organic and Conventional

Cotton Farming Systems in Meatu District, Tanzania. In: Singh, Bal Ram,

Andy Safalaoh, Nyambilila A. Amuri, Lars Olav Eik, Bishal K. Sitaula,

and Rattan Lal (editors), Climate Impacts on Agricultural and Natural

Resource Sustainability in Africa, Springer, p. 175-200.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37537-9_10

d) Aihounton, G.B.D., Henningsen, A., and Trifkovic, N.: Pesticide

Handling and Human Health: Conventional and Organic Cotton Farming in

Benin. IFRO working paper 2021/06. Department of Food and Resource

Economics, University of Copenhagen.

https://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:foi:wpaper:2021_06

e) Olesen, R.S. (2018): Forandring ligger I vores natur – En

feltreportage blandt bomuldsbønder i Tanzania, Geografisk Orientering,

3/2018: 1-9.

http://geografforbundet.dk/geografisk-orientering/geografisk-orientering-32018/

f) Bwana, T.N. (2019): Environmental Performance of Smallholder Organic

and Conventional Cotton Production Systems in Meatu, Tanzania. PhD

thesis, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania.

https://www.suaire.sua.ac.tz/bitstream/handle/123456789/3591/Thomas%20Nestory%20Bwana20.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

g) Thomsen, S.N. (2016): The impacts of organic standards on global

value chain dynamics: a case study of the organic cotton value chain in

Tanzania. MSc Thesis, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource

Management, University of Copenhagen.

h) Henningsen, A. Aihounton, G.B.D.; Baha, M.R.;  Sodjinou, E.;

Elleby, C.;  Hella, J.P.; Mlay, G.I.;  Trifkovic, N. (2021):

Questionnaires for a Survey of Smallholder Cotton Farmers in Benin,

available at Zenodo.org. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5008811

i) Aihounton, G.B.D., and Henningsen, A:

Does Organic Farming Jeopardize Food and Nutrition Security?

IFRO working paper 2023/02. University of Copenhagen,

Department of Food and Resource Economics.

https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:foi:wpaper:2023_02

The SENSWELL project focuses on how sensory properties of foods and the eating environment can be utilised to reduce food intake and at the same time provide high feelings of  well-being both during and after the ingestion of a food or a meal.

The project is hosted by University of Copenhagen in Denmark and is a collaboration between the major sensory research groups in Denmark (DTU and AU), university partners in Europe and a consortium of major food companies. 

IFRO Professor Jørgen Dejgård Jensen is leader of a work package with the objective to investigate the environmental and economic sustainability of dietary patterns with a higher content of foods with high satiation and satiety capacity.

SENSWELL received funding from the Danish Council for Strategic Research

IFRO budget: 719.275

Period: 2011-2015

External members: Henrik Saxe, former Associate Professor at KU.

Project partners from universities

• UCPH-IFRO: University of Copenhagen, SCIENCE-IFRO
• UCPH-FOOD: University of Copenhagen, SCIENCE-FOOD
• AU-FOOD: Aarhus University, Department of Food Science
• AU-MAPP: Aarhus University, Aarhus Business School, MAPP
• DTU-Food: The Technical University of Denmark, Division of Industrial Food Research
• DTU-IMM: Technical University of Denmark, DTU Informatics

Collaborating institutions from the food industry:

• ARLA
• Dairy Fruit
• Lantmännen
• Rynkeby
• Tine
• Unilever

Work Package 5

Work Package 5 - Sustainability assessment and economic impact
The objective of WP5 is to investigate the environmental and economic sustainability of dietary patterns with a higher content of foods with high satiation and satiety capacity. Key outcomes of the work package include assessments of modified dietary patterns’ impacts on the environment and on consumers’ economic food expenditure.

In the work package a number of ‘diet scenarios’ are developed. The scenarios reflect different changes in dietary behavior in terms of replacement of products from the current diet. These ‘diet scenarios’ form the basis for the environmental and economic assessments.

Consequences of a wide-scale implementation of the ‘diet scenarios’ on a number of environmental indicators (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, land use) are evaluated using methods from lifecycle analysis.

Economic impacts of dietary changes according to the ‘diet scenarios’ are estimated for different groups of consumers, based on price information estimated on the basis of market data from retail stores, supplemented with cost-based market price estimates for novel products.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 01 March 2012 - 28 February 2015

Socioec has received funding from The European Commision - 7th Framework programme.

Principal investigator: Jesper Levring Andersen 

Amount: DKK 1.2 mill.

Socioec will analyse a range of available, emerging and possible new management measures to overcome  these shortcomings of fisheries management, and will consider their implementation on a regional level.

About the project

The common Fisheries Policy is in a major reform process at the moment. The European Commission draws the conclusion in their analysis of the previous reform in 2002(COM(2009)163 final) that despite making some progress there are still many problems unresolved. On the positive side the Commission lists better stakeholder involvement, phasing out direct capacity - enhancing subsidies and the introduction of long term managment plans. On the negative side the Commission identifies a deep-rooted problem of overcapacity, imprecise policy objectives, a framework that does not give sufficient responsibility to the industry, lack of compliance and a decision making system that encourages a focus on short-term management. Socioec will analyse a range of available, emerging and pissible new management measures to overcome  these shortcomings of fisheries management, and will consider their implementation on a regional level.

IFRO coordinator: Mattias Borg Rasmussen

About the project

Property and territoriality are key for peoples’ livelihood and political rights in rural areas in many poor countries. Analysing emerging forms of citizenship in a context of changing property regimes links property and citizenship as fundamental concepts, and promises a theoretically innovative and historically grounded analysis. While soil and territory has been studied as a source of national and post-colonial identities, this research seeks to highlight processes of citizenship formation by focusing on the intersections between forms of governance, territorial control and practices of belonging. In the project, I set out to explore citizenship formation on the margins, focusing on the spaces of inclusion that is created among those who are perceived by dominant classes to be obstacles to national development, and perceive themselves to be left out of national development. I emphasize territorial control as suspended between regimes of property and regimes of citizenship, both of them undergoing radical reconfigurations in highland Peru.

I am particularly interested in how local politics seen as negotiations with state authorities as well as the internal affairs of the Peasant Community serve as vehicles for the social production of property and citizenship. I wish to explore the current changes in the patterns of property governance and idioms of citizenship in the Andean highland by scrutinizing the circumstances under which citizenship is articulated through property, how property is articulated as a matter of citizenship, and which role the property regime of the Peasant Community is achieving in terms of putting forward claims and demanding rights. And thus, in different ways, I seek to explore in which ways territoriality moves beyond the territory.

Funding: Det Frie Forskningsråd | Samfund og Erhverv (The Danish Council for Independent Research | Social Sciences)

Period:  01 June 2013 - 31 May 2015

Amount: DKK 1.9 mill.

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: 1 April 2012 - 31 March 2015

Koordinator: Annemette Nielsen, forhenværende adjunkt ved Institut for Fødevare- og Ressourceøkonomi

IFRO medlem: Kia Merete Ditlevsen

WP3: Healthy Weight Behaviour for Toddlers in Families of Diverse Ethnic Background

WP 3 har til formål at undersøge, hvordan praktiserende lægers rådgivning til småbørnsfamilier vedr. vægttab omsættes til vægttabsstrategier i familiernes dagligdag. Projektets datagrundlag består af interviews med læger, observationer af familiekonsultationer hos lægen samt interviews og observationer i familier med småbørn. 

Funding: Det Strategiske Forskningsråd, Individ, sygdom og samfund (The Danish Council for Strategic Research)

PROJECT IS COMPLETED
Project period: January 2014 - December 2019

IFRO coordinator: Carsten Smith-Hall

This research project will investigate how the transition to green growth can be undertaken in the MAP sector in Nepal.  The sector involves millions of people and has potential to promote pro-poor employment and earnings as well as sustainable resource use. 

Funding: TGG-N has received funding from Danida. 

Amount total: DKK 9.0 mill

IFRO share: DKK 3.8 mill

About the project

Trade has the potential to drive the transition to a green economy by promoting sustainable resource use, generating employment, and contributing to poverty alleviation. However, lack of empirically-based knowledge renders this transition difficult. This research project will investigate how the transition to green growth can be undertaken in the MAP sector in Nepal.  The sector involves millions of people and has potential to promote pro-poor employment and earnings as well as sustainable resource use. The project focuses on (i) identifying, describing and quantifying production networks for MAPs traded in and from Nepal to India and China, and (ii) identifying points of intervention that enhances job creation, increase earnings, and promote sustainable resource use. Data is generated through transnational production network actor interviews, from harvesters through traders to end consumers and regulatory bodies, and ecological inventories. The project is developed and managed by the University of Copenhagen, the Federation of Community Forestry Users in Nepal, Tribhuvan University and the Agriculture and Forestry University in Nepal, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Project outcomes will inform the development of policies and strategies for transiting to green growth in natural resource sectors in low income countries. Outputs include international papers, policy briefs, strengthening Nepalese partners’ human and social capital, and sector-wide stakeholder participation.

Policy brief: "Environmental resource income is important for earthquake-hit rural households".

The purpose of the study is to minimise barriers to the implementation of the Universities, Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation (UniBRAIN) programme and improve its impact by enhancing the learning process of the six agribusiness incubator consortium partners. This is done by capturing participants’ experiences and by facilitating a discussion of lessons learned across the programme.

IFRO coordinator: Carsten Nico Hjortsø

The study will address the incubators’ efforts according to two research questions corresponding to two of UniBRAIN’s main objectives:

• How are agribusiness product, service and process innovations supported and promoted by tripartite incubator networks comprising universities, research institutions and private enterprises?
• How are universities supported in developing agribusiness curriculums that facilitate graduates’ leaving university with entrepreneurial and business skills?  

Outcome

Experiences and Lessons Learned from the UniBRAIN Agribusiness Incubation Programme, Carsten Nico Hjortsø, Ian Keith Alexander, Roberto R. Hernandez Chea (December 2017), IFRO Report 266

Funding and collaborations

UNIEN represents a knowledge sharing platform that includes over hundreds of scholars, education leaders, and education consultants across Danish universities and other higher education institutions who deal with the key question:

How does teaching in innovation and entrepreneurship enhance quality and relevance of higher education?

Visit the DUN (Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Netværk) website here.

Topics UNIEN address are:

• Exams, feedback and its impact on learning entrepreneurial and innovation skills
• How to integrate extra-curricular innovation and entrepreneurial activities into main curricular
• How to best possible combine research- and practice-based teaching in innovation and entrepreneurship

Thus, reflection on teaching didactics and development of new methods in innovation and entrepreneurial education are the key denominator for knowledge sharing within UNIEN that unfolds through seminars, conferences, network meetings, and newsletters.

The collaboration and projects UNIEN runs will amount into a joint online publication on exams and feedback in innovation and entrepreneurship at higher education.

UNIENs is funded by The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship - Young Enterprise (FFE_YE)

Collaborators:

• The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship - Young Enterprise (FFE_YE)
• DUN - Danish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education
• INNOENTRE - Framework for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Support in Open Higher Education
• University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, University of Southern Denmark, Roskilde University, Aalborg University,  Copenhagen Business School

Research topics:

• Case study of exam and feedback practice in innovation and entrepreneurship at higher education

Project period: 01 January 2013 - 31 December 2015

Principal investigator: Søren Marcus Pedersen

Funding: The Precision Farming project has received funding from EU/DK contact point

Amount: DKK 1.5 mill.

The main objective of the Precision Farming project is to develop and demonstrate an integrated and reliable Precision Agriculture solution for orchards and vineyards considering spatial information on irrigation and harvest management. The project proposes a conceptual framework, an innovative technical architecture, and the enabling technologies that will allow to integrate canopy and fruit sensors with mobile an static data acquisition systems, and farm management information systems, targeting a system that will serve farmers.

Africa has untapped potential for creating monetary value from origin products in the same way ham from Parma and other highly valuable EU agricultural origin food products registered with ‘protected’ Geographical Indications (GIs) add 15 billion Euros per annum to European agriculture.

Aiming to accelerate valorization of green inclusive growth in Africa, VALOR will create new knowledge on how African origin product (OP) producers can add value to their products by documenting and incorporating territory specific cultural, environmental and social qualities. In the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) context VALOR will thus promote wise use of market forces.

VALOR involves research capacity strengthening in 3 partner countries, Ghana, Kenya & Tanzania, pursuing its objectives via 5 work packages (WPs).

Project methodology ensures data collection and fieldwork, involving agencies in the public & private sector. Articles, conference papers, policy briefs, website & other VALOR outputs feed into an impact pathway including country roundtables & review mechanisms of the CAADP, helping Africa leapfrog into a green economy allowing geographical indications (GI´s) add billions of Euros to its monetary economy and allowing smallholders create employment and build monetary value, stewarding pollination services, and so increasing qualities and volumes of the wider food economy.

Visit the project website here.

Period: January 2014-December 2017

Funding: DANIDA

IFRO contact person: Aske Skovmand Bosselmann.

Amount: DKK 10.0 mill
IFRO share: DKK 3.7 mill

Formålet med projektet har været at undersøge mulighederne for at udvikle en danskproduceret kylling, som velfærdsmæssigt reelt adskiller sig fra en standardkylling, men som ikke koster så meget som en økologisk kylling.

Projektet ”Velfærdskyllinger der er til at betale” er finansieret af Fødevareministeriet og gennemført af Lars Esbjerg og Trine Mørk fra MAPP ved Aarhus Universitet samt Tove Christensen fra Institut for Fødevare- og Ressourceøkonomi ved Københavns Universitet.

IFRO koordinator: Tove Christensen 

Projektet fokuserede på hvad markedsdeltagerne opfatter som en reel og realistisk velfærdsforbedring. Emnet blev belyst i en workshop med interessenter fra kyllingesektoren og efterfølgende tolket og sammenholdt med erfaringerne fra litteraturstudier og interviews med erhvervet og brancheorganisationer. På denne baggrund blev der peget på de to velfærdskyllinger.

Der er ikke foretaget detaljerede omkostningsanalyser på de produktionsmæssige ændringer, som foreslås i de to velfærdskyllinger, ligesom rekruttering af informanter til hhv. workshoppen og interviews var præget af knappe ressourcer i projektet. I et større projekt vil det være muligt i højere grad at integrere analyser af eksperters og lægfolks holdninger, ligesom det vil være muligt at komme tættere på specifikke produktionsformer, der vil føre til reelle velfærdsforbedringer og som kan forventes at have en realistisk markedsappel.

Hent rapporten her.