GuruGeri

GuruGeri is the pseudonym of Gerold Rahmann. Gerold has been involved with agriculture his entire life, both professionally and privately.

Gerold was born in 1962 and grew up on a farm in East Frisia in north-west Germany. He has studied agricultural economics at the at the University of Göttingen, Germany until 1990 with the thesis about 'Dairy farming in Malawi', gained his PhD there in 1994 in the field of rural development with the dissertation about 'economic actions of nomads in Sudan in the case of droughts' and habilitated as an agricultural ecologist with the profile on 'Biotope management as new function and production of animal husbandry' at the University of Kassel (Germany) in 1999 and became Professor at the faculty in 2006.

In 2000, he was appointed founding director of the Federal Research Centre for Organic Agriculture, where he worked there until he retired. From 2015-2017 he took a sabbatical to work as program director for the German ministry of International Cooperation in the "OneWorld - No-Hunger" Initiative in Ethiopia.

In 2000, Gerold became founding director of the Federal Institute of Organic Farming at the German Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL). In 2007, the German federal agricultural research was reorganized and the FAL terminated. The Institute of Organic Farming was integrated into the Research Centre of Rural Areas, Forestry and Fishery - the Thuenen-Institute - under the umbrella of the German Ministry of Nutrition and Agriculture (BMEL). From 2015 to 2017, he took a long term leave to establish the Green Innovation Centre in Ethiopia, as part of the Special Initiative One World no Hunger, as global programme of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Besides the main job duties, Gerold was voluntarily active in national and international organizations, mainly in the area of organic farming. 2014-2024 he was president of the International Society of Organic Farming Research (ISOFAR) and from 2014-2021 World Board member of the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM). From 2014-2021 Gerold was editor-in-chief of the scientific Journal of Organic Agriculture and associated editor of the scientific Journal of Sustainable and Organic Farming.
In 1986, he joined the German Green party and became active in the counties of Göttingen (1989-2000) and Stormarn (2003-2028).

During his life, he has seen and experienced a lot about agriculture and food systems all over the world.

America in East Frisia (1962 - 1980)