Meet the team: Florian Doerr, Associate Professional Officer, FAO North America
1. How did you get interested in food and agriculture issues?
I grew up in a small village in rural Germany, where we had a big garden and always went to buy fresh milk from the village cowshed. Our neighbors had chickens, cows and goats. Many of my earliest childhood memories involve food. Even after moving to a city, having a garden with fruit trees and vegetables, and composting were normal things in my family.
Working in food and agriculture was not always an obvious choice for me. After high school, I volunteered for one year in a music project in Nicaragua, where I saw for the first time how tropical crops like mangos, pineapples, cashew, coffee and cocoa grow, and under which working conditions these crops are produced. I remember how surprised I was seeing my first pineapple and cocoa plantation. This sparked a deep interest in tropical crops, international value chains and the lack of decent working conditions along them.
After my bachelor studies, I worked for the German Development Cooperation GIZ in Nicaragua, and was seconded to Nicaragua’s leading environmental organization FUNDENIC, where I learned a lot about protected areas, afforestation, and the environmental impacts of plastic waste, sugarcane production and dynamite fishing. It was then when I realized that there can be no environmental agenda that ignores food and agriculture, and that there can be a big difference between laws and policies on paper and in practice.
A research-oriented master in Global Political Economy from the University of Kassel allowed me to gain a deep understanding in critical political economy, globalization, governance of the world market, international economics, theories of political economy, as well as qualitative and quantitative research methods. I was lucky enough to be able to conduct my master thesis field research in Ghana, where I studied rural differentiation, land tenure and value chain upgrade strategies of cocoa producers in the world’s learning cocoa production region. It was a former FAO staff member, Prof. Walter Belik from Brazil, who introduced me to the basic concepts of food security and the holistic and historically-grounded approach of food regimes thinking. It is great to see that things like systems thinking, analyzing synergies and tradeoffs, contradictions within food systems, policy incoherence, and addressing power relations are now coming to the forefront in international debates, which have been emphasized in agrarian political economy literature for decades.
Working for the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) under Prof. Christoph Scherrer’s leadership furthermore allowed me to specialize in food and agriculture topics, and to contribute a book chapter on decent work challenges in southern agriculture.
What now might look like a rather linear path is the result of great mentorship and life-changing encounters, for all of which I am extremely grateful.
2. When did you join FAO and how long have you worked here?
I joined FAO in 2017 as an Associate Professional Officer (APO) from Germany. The APO program is fantastic and I can recommend it to anyone. I joined the Nutrition and Food Systems Division (ESN) at FAO headquarters in Rome under the leadership of Anna Lartey. I used my time in Rome to meet and network with many colleagues from several divisions, which allowed me to gain a fast understanding of the incredibly diverse work of the organization. With over 11 000 employees and such a broad mandate, FAO is indeed a very big place to understand. Being at headquarters and seeing how major policies and recommendations on a global level are shaped at FAO conferences and in the Committee for World Food Security (CFS) has been deeply insightful.
After 6 months in Rome, my position was designed to switch to the FAO Liaison Office for North America in Washington, DC, where I support a variety of office functions from communications to partnerships and event organization with stakeholders in the United States and Canada. I was also seconded to the World Bank Agriculture Global Practice, where I supported work on responsible investment in agriculture and nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Working with many great organizations and stakeholders in the USA and Canada has been a highly rewarding experience.
3. What do you like about your job?
Working for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is an honor for me, as I do believe it is one of the most high-level public service positions in the world. As public servants, I am convinced that we need to work as hard as possible in the public interest to achieve a healthier planet and healthier people.
I enjoy the very international and multidisciplinary work environment with colleagues from all over the world, who bring unique and diverse perspectives to key issues.
What I also like about working for FAO is that there is something new to learn every day. From international days to new reports, publications, events and campaigns, there are unparalleled opportunities to deepen one’s knowledge and get a more holistic understanding of the interconnections and challenges ahead.
My work has also allowed me to deepen my expertise in nutrition and food systems, food loss and waste, responsible investment in agriculture, land tenure, as well as the importance of pollinators, biodiversity and soil health. This year, I have especially enjoyed learning about Indigenous Peoples Food Systems and their key potential to inform debates about the future of food in a holistic and historic way.
I also enjoy learning about the knowledge gaps which still exist in the 21st century, many of which have come to my surprise. How can the world know so little about the microbiome, which makes up most cells in our bodies? How come that there is relatively few investments and research into fruits and vegetables if eating several portions daily is key for our health? How come we know more about the surface of Mars than the bottom of our oceans? How can we only know 1% of soil biodiversity and continue to lose topsoil at alarming rates, if 95% of our food comes from the soil? If unhealthy diets are a leading cause of non-communicable diseases and deaths, why do physicians receive almost no nutrition training? How come that both undernutrition and overweight continue to increase, while tons of nutrient-dense foods are wasted? How come global wealth is growing faster than the population, yet 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet?
I do believe that these will be central questions for the coming decade.
4. Looking forward
Food and agriculture might seem to some in the industrialized world as a sector of the past, where it is easy to forget that food and agriculture are major economic sectors in most parts of the world. I do believe that the way agriculture and food systems are shaped have the power to destroy or save our planet. Nothing less. Food can equally enable us to have a healthy life or end it prematurely. It is therefore encouraging to see that emerging research around healthy diets and sustainability shows that what tends to be healthier for our bodies also tends to be healthier for the planet. This should after all, not be a surprise, unless we believe in a false dichotomy between humans and nature. What we eat matters, and how it is produced matters as well.
I look forward to continue working towards a more equitable and sustainable planet with a holistic and historically informed approach. Ultimately, it is the stories and memories of food, and the specific cultures and contexts in which food is embedded, that connect all of us to past and future generations.