Singapore is a city that is world-class in many ways: the metropolis is - besides Hong Kong - Asia's most important financial centre. Singapore has one of the highest quality of life in the world, but also the highest cost of living worldwide. The reason: Singapore has around 6 million inhabitants in an area the size of Hamburg. And by 2030 the city will grow by another million people. New land must be wrested from the sea, and the city state currently has to import around 90 percent of its food. Food security therefore has the highest political priority. In February 2019, Singapore decided on a new food strategy and wants to grow around 30 percent of its own food by 2030 - with the help of indoor cultivation, i.e. vertical farming. That would also be world-class. The newly created Singapore Food Agency of the Ministry of Agriculture is to ensure that the goal is achieved.

It is therefore a great honour for us to welcome Chuan Poh Lim, Director of the Singapore Food Agency, who was appointed in April, as a keynote speaker at the upcoming Global Food Summit. Chuan Poh Lim will present the technical innovations and solution strategies Singapore will use to tackle the issue of food security on 25 March 2020 in Munich. 

Another highlight of the conference will be our Global Panel discussion on 26 March 2020, where high-ranking representatives of global government organisations will discuss strategies for the global implementation of sustainable and circular food production. We look forward to Oriana Romano, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, Máximo Torero, Deputy Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and a representative of the World Economic Forum in Davos and the German Academy of Science and Technology (acatech) in Munich.

Prof. David Zilberman from the University of Berkeley will examine how Artificial Intelligence is used not only in industrial production and agriculture, but also the drastic consequences of new technologies in urban areas enabling more sustainable production than conventional agriculture. 

Ticket sales start immediately: tickets for early booking cost € 280, for science and associations € 190.

We also look forward to welcoming you to Berlin in advance, on 6 November 2019, at a very unusual location with a very unusual ambience: Namely among dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum in Invalidenstrasse. This year, the Global Food Summit will be represented for the first time at Berlin's Science Week, which will take place from 1 to 10 November 2019. And also for the first time, the topics of food and agriculture will be addressed at Science Week and we are a bit proud that we can give the food industry a voice in this scientific environment.

Our speakers are: Dr. Ousmane Badiane, Director Africa, IFPRI, Washington, Prof. Christian Ulrichs, from Humboldt University in Berlin and: Benjamin Wilde, PhD student in the group of Johan Six and at the RUNRES project of the ETH Zurich. All three will discuss the topic "Foodtropolis - Urban.Circular.Food." with our guests. Come and see us. Admission is free. 

Our partner for the following evening event is ETH Zurich. 

In this sense - see you. 

In November in Berlin or in March in Munich.

Sincerely yours
Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein

Imagine that there are Vertical Farming greenhouses that operate completely autonomously. What would the pollination of the plants look like here? One idea is to rely on robotic bees. But what could they look like? 

We spoke with Dr. Matěj Karásek, Guest Researcher at the Faculty of Airspace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Founder of Flapper Drones, a Spin-off of TU Delft. He and his team have developed the DelFly Nimble, a novel flapping wing robot with exceptional flight characteristics.

What were the biggest challenges in the development of the DelFly Nimble, compared to their previous versions?

Taking inspiration from birds and insect, the DelFly robots fly by flapping their wings. For control and flight stability, all the previous DelFly versions used a tail, just like the one conventional airplanes have. Winged insects and hummingbirds, on the contrary, stabilize the flight actively by continuously adjusting their wing motion patterns in response to disturbances such as wing gusts. This also allows them to perform quick maneuvers. 

The major challenge in the development of DelFly Nimble was to design wing actuation mechanisms that would enable such bioinspired adjustments of the wing motion within the size, weight and power constraints of a 30-g robot. Just like animals move their wings in response to their sensory and neural systems, the robot had to be equipped with miniature motion sensors and a computer. The on-board algorithms estimate the robot’s orientation and give commands to the actuation mechanisms to keep the flight stable.

Early-Bird Ticket sales are starting

"Jeez, it's chockers in here" is what they say in Australia when it's breaking full somewhere. Our partner country Australia will also be able to say at the Global Food Summit: "Man, it's pretty crowded here". Meet speakers from the FAO, the OECD, Canada, the Netherlands, the government in Singapore, and of course Australia. Exchange ideas with start-ups, companies, associations, scientists and politicians. 

Don't think twice - take one:

Our early bird ticket sale starts today until November 30, 2019 – you can buy the tickets for 280€ per person.  

You can find the tickets and the program on our homepage at www.globalfoodsummit.com.

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Upcoming Events

Speakers

Innovation: Cheese out of the laboratory

Call for Abstracts starts: Urban.Circular.Food.

Food Communication Trends:
#GFS20: Communication and acceptance of food innovations in societies

www.globalfoodsummit.com