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The Agricultural Development and Trade Group conducts research on key issues of agricultural development such as the governance of water, the development of food processing, the sectoral and macroeconomic impacts of climate change and the role of the agricultural sector in society at large (social functions of agriculture; animal welfare governance).
Research is also conducted on trade policies as a specific instrument of agricultural development, for example on the potential of trade facilitation, on the "educational tariff argument" and on the EU's international trade integration.
Methodological Focus: Quantitative Modeling of Agrifood Systems
We develop and apply a wide set of optimization and partial and general equilibrium models in our research:
- Agrifood Systems in Economy-Wide Simulation Models
- Focus on Near-East and African countries
- Food Demand in Sustainable Agrifood Systems
- Joint Thünen-Institute/Thaer research group on farm level and sectoral simulation modeling headed by Alexander Gocht.
Based on our research, we teach basic and advanced courses in simulation modeling to our students at Humboldt-University of Berlin (Introduction to Simulation Modeling in Market and Policy Analysis, Intermediate Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, The Partial Equilibrium Model CAPRI in Market and Policy Analysis) as well as in multi-week short courses in a transdisciplinary setting in countries where we have a research focus. Over the years, we taught short courses in Ghana, Kenya, Benin, Sudan, Ethiopia and Bhutan.