Archive (News)

Professor Dr. Peter Weingarten has been appointed by the German Minister of Food and Agriculture, Christian Schmidt, to the newly established Expert Council for Rural Development.

With the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Commission decided upon a more environmental-friendly, “greener” first pillar. The effectiveness of the greening measures for nature conservation and environmental protection, however, is discussed controversially. In various projects…

Within the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy farms with more than 15ha arable land must manage 5% of their area as an ecological focus area. How were these areas used previously? How valuable are they for nature protection?

Many peripheral rural regions are affected by unemployment, low wages, sparse infrastructure, out-migration and population ageing. The federal ministry of agriculture searches for new approaches for developing such regions. We research these new pilot programs concerning their feasibility and…

The German agricultural statistics are an important source of information for estimating environmental effects and agricultural trends. The access at a high resolution level (municipalities) is limited due to data protection issues. Therefore, the Thünen Institute has initialized the project…

A new exhibit on land use and determining factors: Dr. Till Backhaus, Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Consumer Protection Mecklenburg - West Pomeranian, and Prof. Dr. Folkhard Isermeyer, president of the Thünen Institute, opened on December 4 the exhibition LandNutzenLeben at the…

The reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, new trade agreements, global trends: How may these factors influence the German agriculture? A newly released study of the Thünen Institute models various data and gives a projection of the expected trends within the next 20 years. The Thünen Baseline…

In the framework of the research project Agriculturally Relevant Extreme Weather Situations and Possibilities for Risk Management, the Thünen Institute for Rural Areas organized a conference on May 13, 2014.

In a hearing of the Committee on Food and Agriculture of the German Bundestag in Berlin on April 7th, 2014 the president of the Thünen Institute, Folkhard Isermeyer, explained the analysis of the Institute concerning the design of the „Greening“ within the framework of the reform of the Common…

Farmers as energy farmers: As to the Renewable Energy Sources Act especially sparsely populated rural counties receive considerably more payments per inhabitant for renewable energy than cities. This is one core result of a recent study of the Thünen-Institute.