MentorIn: Prof. Dr. Imke de Boer, University of Wageningen, Department of Animal Sciences, Niederlande / Dr. Christian Schader, Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau, Departement für Sozioökonomie, Schweiz
My research stay within the YSMP took place at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) in Frick, Switzerland in September 2017. I was able to work on several tasks during a period of 3 weeks.
A first task was to exchange detailed information about the material flows models used at SEC, BioBam, and FiBL, SOLm, with respect to a planned paper on GHG emissions from future land use and lifestyle scenarios building on findings from Erb et al (2016). In several meetings with Adrian Müller and Anita Frehner, we learned that not only the modelling architectures are quite different in the two models but also the conceptual starting point of the flow calculations/assessments. We were able to formulate a list with the most important differences and entry points for our further collaboration.
A second task included a presentation of my own PhD-research in a public seminar at FiBL. This seminar helped me gathering important feedback from experts in different disciplines and helped me improving form and structure of my presentation. Additional bilateral meetings with my mentor Christian Schader helped me to gain valuable insights on improving my understanding of the conceptual approaches that I used to integrate the outcomes of my five publications. The discussions at FiBL were helpful during the preparation and finally also in accomplishing my dissertation defense on 18 October 2017.
Moreover, I was able to continue the work on analyzing results from food product assessments, data that was calculated during my work at FiBL Austria in the “zurück zum ursprung” project. In several virtual discussions, I was able to continue the work with Thomas Drapela, Stefan Hörtenhuber and Isabella Gusenbauer on analyzing the interrelationships, trade-offs and synergies of different sustainability indicators of different food categories at farm level.
Finally, yet importantly, I had great discussions with my Korean flat-mate Younghyn, a guest researcher at FiBL who is working on exploring organic alternatives to mineral fertilizing methods.