The room is filling up and everyone is getting excited. Prof.Dr. Bohdan Lojka from Check University of Life Sciences enters the stage and welcomes everybody very warmly to this years Tropentag conference in Prague. He also pointed out that he is very happy that so many people registered for the conference and can finally, after 3 years of pandemic, meet again in person. He presents the conference program and makes a little joke that whoever finds the most mistakes in the program will receive a bottle of a very good Czech vine. So, good luck!

Prof.Dr. Michal Lošťák, Vice‐Rector Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, appreciates that people from over 120 countries are here at the University and the number of international staff is growing too. He describes the Campus as a kind of Vatican for science for the following days after he tells us that the Vatican is a state with only a size of 43 hectares.

The deputy minister of agriculture Pavel Sekáč thinks that solving the challenge of feeding the world with agroecology is possible, if we want. In his view, we must train a generation who can be able to solve problems and stop thinking horizontaly, but instead verticayl, so build vertical farms, for example. He is looking forward to seeing the conclusions of the conference.

The last person on stage is Folkard Asch, professor at the university of Hohenheim and head of ATSAF e.V., introducing the student reporters. He let us know that the conference is about giving knowledge from one generation to the next, and that he wants to invite young people to discuss new developments. “Tropentag is supposed to be a platform for exchange across generations,” he says. Professor Asch then reminds us that the former German Minister for Environment, Dr. Angela Merkel, was informed 20 years ago about the effects of climate change and that she has not listened or reacted.