CultivaTUM

The Context, The Problem, & Our Goal

The Context

We are an interdisciplinary team of students from TUM and partner universities, brought together by the TUM: Junge Akademie scholarship. Our class theme for this year is "Mind the Gap!"—a challenge to identify, analyze, and bridge the divides in our society.

The Problem

Agriculture is facing a "polycrisis"—climate change, market volatility, and geopolitical instability. But in our first few weeks of research, we've noticed a massive disconnect:

• Academia recommends long-term resilience and ecological restoration.
• Industry often acts on short-term efficiency and survival.

Our Goal

Over the next 20 months, Team CultivaTUM aims to investigate how uncertainty shapes the agricultural sector in the Global North vs. Global South. We want to map the gap between what science suggests and what the industry actually does—and understand why it exists.