News
Appointment of Friedhelm Taube as a professor at Wageningen University & Research
Professor Friedhelm Taube has been appointed special professor Grass-based dairy farming at Wageningen University & Research. The special chair, as of 1 November 2018, will be funded by Dutch Agrarian and Horticultural Organisation LTO, Wageningen Livestock Research, Zuivel.nl and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The chair is part of the Animal Production Systems chair group, headed by Prof. Imke de Boer.
Prof. dr. Friedhelm Taube (1955) studied Agricultural sciences in Kiel, Germany, and graduated in 1986. In his research in Kiel, Prof. Taube focused on grass and forage crops. In 1991 he was appointed professor of Grass and Forage Science/Ecology. Since 1997, Prof. Taube has been head of the interdisciplinary research group ‘Organic agriculture and extensive land use systems’ and professor of ‘Grass and Forage Science/Organic Agriculture’. He also was a Vice-President of the German Crop Science Society and Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences at Kiel University.
With over thirty years of research experience in grassland science and forage production, there are 475 articles to the account of Prof. Taube, of which more than 120 are peer-reviewed in international scientific journals.
As a special professor of Grass-based dairy farming in Wageningen, Prof. Taube will focus on the challenge of combining dairy farming on grassland with the improvement of other so-called ecosystem services, such as landscape quality (including cows in pasture), biodiversity and carbon sequestration. This requires a system approach that considers the complex interaction between soil, plants (grass and other fodder crops), ruminants (grass intake, grass use, value of manure), food supply and other ecosystem services.