Leverage points in the food system: Designing Interventions

You will explore how local food systems can be transformed by identifying and acting upon leverage points—places where targeted interventions can generate meaningful systemic change. Using the Living Lab SpeiseWald Süd as a case study, you will investigate how an existing place can be embedded in and contribute to the local food system. You will analyse its relationships with local production, consumption, biodiversity, knowledge, infrastructure, and food culture.

Together, we will explore opportunities to improve the food system, including aspects like citizen science, shorter supply chains, stronger connections between production and consumption, stewardship for biodiversity, and greater knowledge of local edible plants and ways to process and use them.

Based on your analysis, you will identify potential leverage points and develop place-based interventions. Rather than designing isolated solutions, you will consider how interventions can build on existing ecological, social, cultural, and spatial conditions and contribute to longer-term systemic change.

The project combines systems thinking, place-based research, food-system analysis, and intervention design. You will move from understanding the existing system, through identifying leverage points, to developing and communicating an intervention that strengthens SpeiseWald Süd as a catalyst for a more resilient, connected, and sustainable local food system.

Please notice: The first meeting is a kick-off meeting to introduce the project and presentthe time plan, as I will be on travel twice in November. After the kick-off, you can decide to proceed or not – if you join, full committment is important.

You will explore how local food systems can be transformed by identifying and acting upon leverage points—places where targeted interventions can generate meaningful systemic change. Using the Living Lab SpeiseWald Süd as a case study, you will investigate how an existing place can be embedded in and contribute to the local food system. You will analyse its relationships with local production, consumption, biodiversity, knowledge, infrastructure, and food culture.

Together, we will explore opportunities to improve the food system, including aspects like citizen science, shorter supply chains, stronger connections between production and consumption, stewardship for biodiversity, and greater knowledge of local edible plants and ways to process and use them.

Based on your analysis, you will identify potential leverage points and develop place-based interventions. Rather than designing isolated solutions, you will consider how interventions can build on existing ecological, social, cultural, and spatial conditions and contribute to longer-term systemic change.

The project combines systems thinking, place-based research, food-system analysis, and intervention design. You will move from understanding the existing system, through identifying leverage points, to developing and communicating an intervention that strengthens SpeiseWald Süd as a catalyst for a more resilient, connected, and sustainable local food system.

Please notice: The first meeting is a kick-off meeting to introduce the project and presentthe time plan, as I will be on travel twice in November. After the kick-off, you can decide to proceed or not – if you join, full committment is important.