Get Together

Slovenia - "Small country - great diversity" was the theme of this year's excursion abroad to the small country between the Alps and the Mediterranean. A total of 29 students and 6 lecturers spent a week traveling the country in June and visited a large number of companies as well as the university in Maribor. Caroline Willmann and Clara Fischer from the excursion team told us about their many impressions.

Brandenburg - "Competition for soil and water"This was also the motto of a visit by students and lecturers from the Department of Agricultural Policy and Environmental Governance to the federal state in the east of Germany in June. Sören Köpkte from the FG reported. In addition to visiting institutions such as the Thünen Institute in Braunschweig, there was also a meeting with the citizens' initiative against the Tesla plant in Grünheide.

On the podium that evening were Ingo Sellemann, who is the district manager in Hilgershausen, Dr. Hilmar von Bodelschwingh, who is a board member of the Hesse Organic Hunting Association, and Jörg Kaiser Kaiser from the Öx organic farm in Frankershausen. The event was moderated by our board member Hermann Darr.

First, all participants gave insights into their work and Dr. von Bodelschwingh introduced the ÖJV and what distinguishes it from "conventional" hunters. This was followed by a lively discussion about cooperation between the three sectors of forestry, agriculture and hunting. The topics of game damage in agriculture and the wolf took up a large part of the evening. After almost three hours, this interesting evening, which was characterized by lively participation from the audience, came to an end and some people stayed on to enjoy good drinks and discuss the topics in more depth in small groups.

The evening was organized by Andreas Kleinlein, who supervises the professional internships at the university, and he had invited 4 students to talk about their experiences, which have taken them all over the world. The topic generated a great deal of interest from the students. They reported on their internships:

Elena Denker - She talked about her stay in Canada on a self-sufficient vegetable farm.

Matthias Lenders - He was in Uganda with the Schorlemmer Foundation and gave a very detailed and inspiring account of his time in Africa; the second part of his report was about his internship with the Greenpeace organization in Berlin.

Rebecca Müller - She also gave us an insight into two internships, one at FiBL in Switzerland, where she was involved in experiments on duckweed, and the other about her time on the alp.

Stefanie Gebhardt - She made us smile with her topic, as she completed her internship at the company Finizio, based in Eberswalde, which is a start-up that deals with the composting of human excrement and processes it for agricultural use.

Unfortunately, the evening had to be canceled due to illness.