Educational

All around our planet, food production is running into an increasing demand for quantity and quality, which is partly connected to the increase in population, but also to the growing financial resources of large segments of the population which were previously malnourished and - not last - to the continuous change in people’s life-style.

The challenge of the future still aims at identifying development models suitable to a system that is growing fast globally, resulting in a continuous series of new needs and demands. The aim is creating a diversified and distinctive system according to the geographical areas and the different populations – poor or very poor populations, to which the access to healthy food and water must be guaranteed, and rich populations, characterized by the need for security and the necessity for defining more suitable dietary patterns.

The environmental sustainability of agricultural and food production turns into a challenge that has to be faced with ever-growing urgency. A third of the food produced globally gets lost or wasted and it shows a great problem in efficiency. In a global scenario characterized by a decrease in production and an increase in food prices, reducing waste is also to be considered a necessity.

Wastes, efficiency, sustainability, availability, environmental impact are all parallel topics requiring integrated solutions.

In order to win the “challenge of the future”, training competent specialists able to operate at international level in the various areas and disciplines involved has to be considered a priority. This results in the need of organizing  excellence training programs.

The professors from the University of Parma who play an active role in the field of foods study and teaching belong to different areas of study. There are agronomists, engineers, doctors, microbiologists, nutritionists, food technologists, humanists, veterinarians.

Those high-level competences have contributed to our University scientific and didactic excellence in the Food and Food industry fields.