Why has food become so expensive?

621 children and young people gathered for the school press conference and asked exciting questions.

Never before has it been so crowded at the information.medien.agrar e.V. (i.m.a.) school press conference. 621 children and young people from third to 12th grade, as well as 70 teachers, bustled around the Brandenburg Hall with their colorful jackets, backpacks and the chocolate and vanilla milk they had received at the entrance, resembling a hidden object in this visual overwhelm. Some were allowed to sit at the outer edges of the stage, some stood in the aisle, most sat on the floor in front of the stage, with the front row almost hanging in the flower decorations - close and ready to ask the first question.

At the biggest press conference of International Green Week this year, the topic was "How safe is our food supply?" On the podium, Ulrike Fechner from the Brandenburg Rural Women's Association, Oliver Numrich from the Federation of German Food and Drink Industries and Heiko Terno from the Landesbauernverband e.V. faced critical questions from young journalists from the editorial teams of school newspapers and media working groups from Berlin and Brandenburg.

The very first question had it all: "How much energy do you use per day to produce food?" asked a young girl with a ponytail who had positioned herself at the very front. "Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly," answered Oliver Numrich. Instead, he listed the different energy sources and referred to the possible use of renewable energies.

It didn't get any easier: "What is climate neutral nutrition? Why does the content of some products become less? What can be done for a fair distribution of food? Does it make sense to eat only organic meat? How much food do you need for the animals? If you say that a dairy cow gets 50kg of feed a day, why don't we eat the grain rather than the cow?"

After 50 minutes, the requests to speak still did not decrease. Moderator Bernd Schwintowski ushered in the final minutes and promised, "Please email us your questions that we can't answer here anymore. We will answer all of them."

Mia was still able to accommodate her question: "Why has food become so expensive?" asked the nine-year-old student from Berlin. The fourth-grader thus put into words what many consumers are thinking when they currently shop in the supermarket. Oliver Numrich pointed to the increased energy and raw material prices that have to be paid for in production and passed on to consumers, at least in part.

Mia was pleased with her first student press conference. "I found all the questions exciting," she said before continuing to roam around Green Week with her class. Free tickets were available for all participants in the student press conference, which they could use to explore the rest of the fairgrounds.