Ulrich is a professor at Coventry University in England, United Kingdom. He is a co-founder of the university’s research centres on agroecology (CAFS, CAWR) based at Ryton Organic Gardens. Ulrich is an agricultural and horticultural engineer/economist by training and has 30 years experience in organic horticulture, food and farming research.

Ulrich has been working in multi-actor EU projects since framework-5, being task-, workpackage-leader, and coordinator in framework-8 (Horizon). The research is co-designed with innovative ecological food and farming businesses of any size and complexity (e.g. community supported agriculture). In his academic work Ulrich has specialised in organic horticulture, agroecology and ecological economics, taking a broader view of this social science. Urban agroecology, agroforestry, vegan organic, bio-dynamic, social farming, and the environmental, social and governance issues of just food systems from the bottom-up are of interest. In addition, Ulrich has long expertise in modelling farm, environmental and policy/economics data sets. Example projects: EU-Rotate-N, Foodmetres, BioGreenhouse, Waste Few-ULL, Organic-PLUS, Agromix, Agroecology for Europe, FooDivers.

Prior to the establishment of the agroecology centres, Ulrich has worked as a Horticultural Economist for Garden Organic/HDRA at Ryton, and as visiting professor for Organic Agriculture at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. His PhD was in a project with Israel and Philippines on salinity in mango rootstocks at Humboldt University Berlin. Non-academic professional work is as organic farm inspector and farm business consultant during the transition in East Germany. Ulrich has an agricultural engineering/economic diploma/MSc and a BSc in Philosophy from Bonn and Munich Universities, Germany.

Organic horticulture; Agroecology; Ecological economics; Urban agroecology including health and wellbeing of gardening; Governance, sustainability and standards of ecological food and farming systems; Social and ecological return on investment; organic agriculture, vegan organic, greenhouse crops, fruit trees, agroforestry, silvopasture and silvohorticulture