CluE - Cluster Ernährungswissenschaft
Project Description
CluE stands for Cluster Ernährungswirtschaft – Food Industry Cluster – of the research project nordwest2050: Prospects for Climate-Adapted Innovation Processes in the Metropolitan Region Bremen-Oldenburg in Northwestern Germany, funded under the focus sector of the KLIMZUG project by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The goal of nordwest2050 is to develop climate adaptation strategies, the key questions being: What have the effects of climate change been to date, will they impact the Bremen-Oldenburg Metropolitan Region in the future, and how can these changes be addressed positively and in a timely manner?
For this purpose, the focus has concentrated on three economic clusters: the energy industry, the ports and logistics industry, and the food industry. The food cluster is under the supervision of the Institute for Business Administration and Corporate Environmental Policy of the University of Oldenburg, directed by Professor Dr. Reinhard Pfriem and his team.
In addition to focusing on climate adaptation – instead of climate protection – the project is characterized by close cooperation with regional actors, such as corporations. The goal, after the five-year term of the project, to initiate and establish processes of transformation in the region, in the context of successfully addressing the changes which are likely to be caused by climate change – the development of a so-called “Roadmap of Change.”
Figure 1 shows the major work steps in the context of nordwest2050. Essentially, the project is to operate according to the following logic:
- Vulnerability Analysis: Analysis of the changes likely to be caused by climate change; how vulnerable are the region and its particular industries?
- Innovation Potential Analysis: Which innovative solutions are conceivable with regard to identifying vulnerabilities? How can the sectors of the food industry continue to operate successfully, even under the impact of massive changes?
- Innovation Paths: Implementation of the identified innovation projects. Cf. e.g. under "Partners in Practice": Innovation projects of the partners in practice of CluE.
- All results will ultimately enter into the development of the Roadmap of Change. This will function as a regional adaptation strategy for climate change, and include the results of the project, as well as recommendations for action to ensure the future sustainability of the region.
- Parallel to the project is a cooperative effort with the University of Maryland, the partner region of nordwest2050. Together with Professor Matthias Ruth and his team, an extensive Modeling Process is to be designed.
FOOD PRODUCTION:
In the context of CluE, we will attempt to take into account the great diversity of the regional food economy. We will therefore investigate various sectors and stages, from planting and stock-raising through processing to marketing, covering both conventional and organic, and both small and large operations.
Generally, the food industry is a very significant, regionally rooted key commercial industry in the Bremen-Oldenburg Metropolitan Region. In 2010 alone, the food economy accounted for 44% of industrial sales volume in the Oldenburg Country (the traditional Duchy of Oldenburg; cf. Nordwest-Zeitung, October 21, 2010); that was an increase from 34% in 1998. The food industry is thus by far the most important in the region, ahead of air transport, shipbuilding, synthetics and machine tools.
The Bremen-Oldenburg Metropolitan Region is characterized by a very diverse food industry, with regionally different focuses. One intersectoral characteristic of the food industry is moreover its spatial connection systems and its coherent added-value chains, supported and promoted by a tight network of many different actors.
The ports of Bremen, Brake and Bremerhaven serve an important function in supplying the region with raw materials, such as feed for the animal products sectors. However, the ports are also important for the export of the products produced and raised in the region. Moreover, Bremen is an important site for various brand-name manufacturers in the chocolate, beer, coffee and vegetable oil sectors. Bremerhaven is particularly specialized in fish-related and deep-freeze operations, while the cutter and coastal fishery operations, and fish processing are very relevant in Cuxhaven. Intensive animal husbandry is concentrated in the region between Bramsche, Wildeshausen and Oldenburg. Dairy farming, including feed raising, is primarily located in the pastureland belt in the north of the Metropolitan Region (cf. CEMBO 2010, p. 33). The coastal areas are dominated by milk-cow raising and feed-crop farming. Approx. one quarter of all the cattle in the Metropolitan Region – 1.2 million head in all – are kept in the district of Cuxhaven (cf. CEMBO 2010, p. 64).
Source: CEMBO Metropole Nordwest. Die Frischköpfe (eds.), Backhaus, C., Jordan, K.-P. (2010): Frische, Vielfalt, Qualität. Agrar- und Ernährungswirtschaft in der Metropolregion Bremen-Oldenburg im Nordwesten (Freshness, diversity, quality. The agriculture and food industry and the Bremen Oldenburg Metropolitan region in the Northwest).
LAND USE
Areas used for agriculture and the food industry are increasingly under pressure due to conflicts between various use claims, and also due to the loss of fertile land to the construction of residential and transportation structures. Juxtaposed to those interests is the challenge of long-term global food security which, in the context of climate change, has very high priority. Especially the competition for use between the cultivation of energy crops and food production is a highly dynamic situation which must be viewed in a differentiated manner. For example, the importance of biodiversity is increasing in the context of the danger of pests, which is likely to rise, given changed climatic conditions. That leads to a new perspective on farmland and on the manner of farming, which is an important factor in the preservation of biodiversity and soil quality. Another issue is the link between water availability and the type and intensity of land use. If the dry weather of early summer becomes more intense, large-scale irrigation will become an issue, with negative impact on the quality of the groundwater. In spite of the great dependency of these contexts on the political situation, e.g. the Renewable Energy Feed-In Law, we at nordwest2050 are developing an approach to regulation tailored specifically to the scope of action of regional actors. Since, due to the great complexity of the issue, information on land-use conflicts is often difficult to access and widely scattered, and moreover involves uncertainties and various different interests, the goal of the analysis is to bring politically relevant issues and contexts together, and make them visible. A concept for dialogue oriented events has been drafted under which the scope for dialogue and negotiations regarding climate adapted land-use is to be expanded, and innovations are to be sparked by the development of concrete approaches.
NETWORK FORMATION
The building and intensification of regional network formation within the context of nordwest2050 and the Food Industry Cluster is an important factor for the success of knowledge transfer, as well as for the long-term integration of the issue of climate adaptation into regional structures. Network formation is a key factor in regional development, and innovation-driven economic structures can moreover contribute decisively to reducing uncertainty between participating actors. By ensuring that the concretization of possibilities for action with a long-term perspective in the cluster, or in the networking of economic systems, can be communicated both sector specifically and, beyond that, for the entire industry, possibilities for interaction and knowledge transfer emerge which will be of great value and advantage for the processes of adaptation and transformation made necessary by climate change. In the Food Industry Cluster, our goal is regional networking reference to various focuses and thematic contexts, reflected in the various network partners. For example, cooperative efforts have been established with such partners as Food Nordwest or the Centers of Competence e.V., whose goal is the intensification of regional networking in connection with various nordwest2050 project segments. Moreover, there are indirect cooperation agreements such as with the projects BioenergieRegion Südoldenburg or the Grünlandzentrum Ovelgönne, which deal with the conditions of regional development. With reference to the issues which, for the region as a networked economic system, mean that many actors will have to exchange views about long-term orientation, strategies for action in decision-making for individuals may emerge from proactive network formation. Moreover, there is an intensive exchange with other research projects in the area of climate-adaptation research and sustainability for the food economy, so that at this level too, the transfer and exchange of knowledge and results are provided.