Interview with Klaus Ehrlich, MBA

Klaus Ehrlich, MBA, Diplom-Kaufmann

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As the COVID-19 pandemic has affected countries from all over the world, many people face issues in terms of food supplies. What is your opinion, as a rural development expert, the personal and social effects of the SARS-CoV-2?

Food supply was not a major problem at least in W Europe. Local providers had improved opportunities to enter the market, as prices went up and made their smaller production more competitive. Also consumers now understand better the importance of local or regional supply chains, rather than depending on long distance transport.  However it is to be seen if this will transform into a long-term change of consumption preferences – in the end, budget counts and unless transport and distribution costs remain high, patterns are likely to return to the pre-COVID situation.  It was however a good opportunity for smaller local providers to “get on the radar” of consumers for the future, at least for occasional purchase. 

How can, in your opinion, academics, rural tourism companies and governments work together in order to make progress and defeat a series of stringent issues regarding food nowadays: food waste and food shortages on the one hand and fair treatment of animals and local agricultural production on the other? Can you give us a good practices example?

Food waste appears in all parts of the supply chain and is a big issue. Awareness of consumers is critical to avoid own waste (“buy what you really need”), as is a better planning of big consumers (hotels, catering). Similar applies to treatment of animals, reliable labels and product tracing could help to differentiate products.  As final price is an issue for most consumers, economy of scale remains a relevant aspect – eco-products really took off in Germany, for example, when big distribution chains such as LIDL were able to source sufficient and reliable amounts and put them on the market at competitive prices. A better organization of the first steps in the distribution (from field to gross markets) i.e. through cooperatives that can assure sufficient volume for distribution is necessary:  too many small providers still “go on their own” instead of grouping up.

Tourism is a key industry, developing more every year. Until now, a lot of cities and regions have been complaining about the drawbacks of having so many visitors each year. However, now that trips have been cancelled, people started realizing how much tourists invested in their areas. In your opinion, how can we educate tourists to find a balance between exploring and exploiting?

Visitors – as humans in general – are herd animals: they want to go where everybody else goes. Until they find that the expected experience is spoiled by too many of them.  Then they look for alternatives which likely go through the same process.  Visitor movement control and management is important at level of destination to “stop” at a certain point, parameters needs to be agreed in cooperation with local population and businesses (which may have contrary interests).  On the other hand we need to understand that a destination gets the more attractive, the more variety of services it offers. Especially when addressing smaller or specialized targets, this requires a critical mass of total visitors to make them viable. Uncontrolled affluence in peak times must be avoided.  Important heritage sites like Alhambra or Neuschwanstein already introduced for years the need of pre-booking at clearly defined time frames, thus limiting the number of visitors at the same time and place. This could be implemented in wider areas, especially where they are fragile to be affected by overcrowding (nature parks, small traditional communities). 

How do you think tourism will look like in twenty years’ time? Can rural tourism develop more in a world craving for technological development?

Demand patterns shift considerably over time. Looking at demographics is useful – markets in W Europe and parts of Asia have an increasingly older population with specific preferences and needs. On the other side, the younger generation is less interested in the traditional passive “disco and fiesta” holiday, they are attracted by more individual experiences and possibilities to shape their own program. The trend seems to be a split in two big groups: organized and standardized mass destinations for rather passive visitors, and many small and personalized services for the individual traveler that looks for more own involvement.  Big resort areas (though not as densly massified as Benidorm or Rimini) keep growing;  on the other hand, the great success of AirBnB and holiday home rentals attends the other group.  Rural tourism will need to orientate on this second one, but with a more professional approach in product development, market intelligence, communication, and sales.  Then the perspectives are excellent. 

As population increases, demand for more food products spikes. Many claim that food doesn’t taste the same as it did a generation ago due to the high demand, long supply chains and short delivery periods. The concept of eating local has disappeared from most places. Can rural tourism have an impact on educating people with regard to eating habits and sustainable development?

Mass food production has negative effects on taste, but not necessarily on the nourishing properties that are needed to feed larger populations. The situation in areas with stagnating populations like Europe, Japan, USA or China is different compared with areas of high demographic growth. I do not agree that eating local has disappeared – it is just not that frequent because other alternatives are available now. Still local gastronomy is the first service that visitors look for when they go to another region or country, and this is even more valid for rural tourism.  We also must be aware that authentic local food is not always healthy from a nutritional point of view if consumed daily. There is a need to innovate in knowledge and skills at local level to combine traditional gastronomy with local produce and health issues.

If tourism experts had the power to instantly change three things about our habits today, what would those things be and why?

• Limit overcrowding / overtourism (visitor management)
• Improve awareness, skills and knowledge amongst the small providers to get visible with their offer to visitors with special interest or needs, and assure a high-quality service experience.
• Increase awareness and demand from side of visitors for local authenticity and community in all aspects – even if not delivered in a completely perfect way. Less stars can mean more experience – under the condition that minimum standards are observed.

What are, in your opinion, the current trends in tourism and how do you think they will evolve in the current period?

Long-term trends already were mentioned in two directions: standard and massive, versus individual and small. This process is slow, COVID can accelerate it but growth figures so far are not overwhelming. For sure in times where visitors are afraid of bigger agglomeration of people, small and non-mass destinations and services will have a chance to attract clients that under normal circumstances would not come.  If this transforms into a long-lasting shift in preferences is yet to be seen:  we need to convince these new visitors that our type of service and product is as (or more) attractive than their traditional concept of holiday.

How can we bring children closer to the field of sustainable tourism? How would you envision a curriculum including basic principles of sustainable tourism for school students?

Children are the “bored” participants in traditional mass holidays – therefore families with kids are a very important market for rural tourism. Having fun is the best way to make kids understand and like more sustainable forms of tourism.  This can be during holidays, school trips, or by special didactic elements such as didactic farms that are very popular e.g. in Italy.  For the 13+ years olds, this gets more complicated as they want to socialize and have fiesta –the interest needs to be created earlier. At secondary education, sustainability in general is nowadays on the curricula agenda anyway, specific tourism-related content (impact assessment, culture, local impact) can be introduced in this context. Especially at this age, contrasting real case examples (sustainable rural resort versus mass tourism destination) can be useful.

What are, in your opinion, the main advantages of a career in rural tourism and why would you recommend this field to upcoming students?

Working in tourism first of all is passion. It requires open and flexible personal attitudes and communication skills. If you do not like to deal with people and - up to limits – to serve their needs and wishes, tourism simply is not for you. It also is not a sector to earn much money – if this is the criteria of selecting a career, you are wrong as well. That being said, working in tourism – even temporarily as auxiliary staff – is an excellent personal experience. Direct human feedback from clients is highly rewarding (including unpleasant situations), and it improves social abilities that are useful in every other job as well.  If the possibility to shape own working environment (e.g. by offering small-scale accommodation, active tourism, etc.) is your priority, tourism is about the most adequate sector that you can choose.  If high social recognition, position, or income are your objectives, look elsewhere.

Interview with Milen Georgiev, PhD

Milen Georgiev, PhD

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As the COVID-19 pandemic has created numerous shortages and economic blockages, we’ve been supplied with a lot of articles related to how it actually started. This reinforced ecologists’ claims that people are destroying Earth through their consumer habits. As a scientist in the field of biotechnology, how do you think COVID-19 is going to change our lives from a personal, social and professional point of view?

The COVID-19 will for sure change our personal live as well as the professional one, hopefully in a short term, but most likely will continue within the next 2-3 years from now on. Moreover, all lessons that we, unfortunately, didn’t learn from the previous SARS-CoV-1 and MERS outbreaks are now going to terribly hit us. The big question nowadays is the rate of mutation of the novel SARS-CoV-2, which is a clear predisposition for the development of a successful vaccine in the very near future (perhaps in the next 6-12 months). Although, there are several therapeutic options to cope with viral infections, considering the spread of the outbreak, it is reasonable that development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 is the way to cope with the current pandemia.

In more general aspects of thinking it is evidently clear now that the ever-growing human population and continuous decrease of the wild animals’ habitats will for sure have a great impact on future human’s health.

How can, in your opinion, academics, biotechnology companies and governments work together in order to make progress and defeat a series of stringent issues nowadays: food waste, pollution, disease etc.? Can you give us a good practices example?

For sure we need to join hands in coping with all mentioned challenges, as summarized in the question. In most cases it is still within the academia labs, where the main scientific discoveries are being made. The COVID-19 pandemic again brought back the discussion on how important the fundamental scientific research is. In my opinion Governments (and EU in general) should definitely increase their investments in fundamental research. At the same time the process from a lab-scale research to an industrial application is rather time-consuming, laborious and expensive, and hence here is the right place of the start-ups (mostly at proof-of-concept stage and pilot scale) and biotech companies.

A recent analysis of the food waste production within EU clearly outlined that we (EU citizens) throw away 50% of the food produced! At the same time, we keep investing enormous funds and efforts to develop alternative ways for supplying food to the ever-growing population around the Globe, instead of finding reasonable way(s) how to produce less waste. A successful approach in this direction will also contribute to diminish the global pollution rates.

Eating habits have been developed within societies for centuries and some have changed very little in time (ex. eating pork or chicken). What can biotechnologists do in order to create a new food order and educate people more on what they should consume (or not) and how?

Indeed, eating habits have been developed for centuries and widely vary between different societies and cultures. I am fully confident that we should not drastically change them – Mediterranean diet, for instance, could be healthy for the people of the Mediterranean region, but it is rather doubtful whether it can be beneficial for the people from the north of Europe or Balkan.

As a frequent traveler to East Asia I can make a comparison between eating habits of the Western countries and these in Asia, for instance. Unfortunately, eating habits of the Western countries’ population have changed in the last 30-35 years and this is not in favor of consuming more healthy food. We are, nowadays, eating much more sugar than ever, which is far of being considered as healthy. This is an enormous area where we (biotechnologists and in general all people on nutrition field) need to put more significant efforts in education of the next generation.

What do you think people will eat in twenty years’ time? Will our food habits remain the same?

Same food as now, but hopefully with less sugar (and in general simple carbohydrates). Calories restriction is rather good approach towards extending the life-span the in more general aspects the quality of life. It can be expected that the COVID-19 outbreak will be over in near future, but the pandemia of overweight people (co-called Globesity) shall be a really big challenge.

As population increases, demand for more food products spikes. Many claim that food doesn’t taste the same as it did a generation ago due to the new substances used for fertilizing plants and increasing production. However, these substances often help minimize health risks for consumers (ex. allergies). Could food also help us overcome other health issues? Could biotechnology have an impact on that?

It is definitely the case that the demand for food and food products continuously increase. It is also true that the shelf life of the foods increases over the years, which is due to the use of food preservatives. In general, most of the compounds used at present are not problematic, but their excessive amounts’ accumulation in human body could eventually be – we need to put efforts into this direction, i.e. finding ways to extend the shelf life of the food products, without putting the human health at risk.

If biotechnology had the power to instantly change three things about our food today, what would those things be and why?

I strongly believe we need more fermentation-based foods, i.e. yoghurt, cheese, just a name a few. We now believe that the contemporary medicine is contributing significantly towards the extension of the human’s life-span, however for instance a century ago people (especially at the Balkan’s region) were able to reach 100 years of age. I do believe this is due to the daily consumption of the fermentation-based foods and beverages.

What are, in your opinion, the current trends in biotechnology and how do you think they will evolve in the current period?

Biotechnology, nowadays, is facing a really bright time – there were many recent developments on the field, which allowed us to better understand the biochemical machineries of producers (i.e., microbial, plant and animal cells) and hence to engineer these processes towards new, better and more qualitative products.

As invisible attackers, such as the SARS-CoV-2 keep assaulting our societies, there is a constant need of defense against them. Science usually is the best shield and that is why, in such times, people tend to look more closely into scientific solutions. Sometimes, children are the best audience for scientific education. Do you have favorite scientific materials or documentaries for children that you would recommend?

Viruses and in general microbes are not invisible – nowadays in our laboratories we can nicely see them under microscopes and by far have developed many therapeutic approaches to fight with the pathogenic ones. At the same time many microbes (incl. some viruses) could be very beneficial for the human health and to be used in different therapies for human maladies, hence I believe it is very important to educate young people for the “invisible” world of microbes that exist among us.

How can we bring children closer to the field of biotechnology? How would you envision a curriculum including basic principles of biotechnology for school students?

Biotechnology is a rather multidisciplinary field and I believe the education should be divided in two steps: 1) for the young school students it is important to learn about classical biotechnology (i.e., fermentation in food and beverages production), while 2) advance school students should follow different branches of biotechnologies, i.e., green (plant biotechnology), red (medicinal biotechnology), white (industrial biotechnology) and grey biotechnology (environmental).

What are, in your opinion, the main advantages of a career in biotechnology and why would you recommend this field to upcoming students?

Definitely a career in biotechnology is offering many advantages. It is a multidisciplinary field, hence during the education students get a knowledge in biology, chemistry and engineering – fields that can be hardly covered, in such depth, by any other discipline. Moreover, biotechnology is continuously growing, hence the possibility to develop new products (of such with an improved value) is very likely.