Circular agriculture & Digital are the future !!
Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog
The average farmer family in the 1950s would be considered ‘flexitarian’ nowadays. They ate meat once a week – if at all – and on Fridays they had fish. They grew much of their food themselves: father worked hard on the cash crops, mother held an allotment where she cultivated the daily food: potatoes, vegetables, berries and more. She conserved them in mason jars. The family kept their own pig, raising it for the meat. The man had his own grain ground at the mill where they kept one part for sale and the family got one part back for consumption. This is a hipster lifestyle pur sang. Today, this is an ideal for many people while people back then didn’t have any other choice.
From the golden age to smallholder farmers
This example demonstrates that we seem to have come full circle with our ideas and ideals about agriculture and food production. Since the end of World War II, scaling was the keyword. This was necessary to produce all the food that was needed for the growing population and, on top of that, the demands of the emerging middle class (having a meat-based menu, for instance). Antibiotics, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and hybrids revolutionized farming. Farms could scale up, ensure big harvests, and required less manual labor. Large stables were built for cattle. Local governments and later the EU subsidized farms, made sure they could grow to enormous proportions. It was the golden age of farming.
But scaling is no longer the keyword in food production – even though we are preparing for an unprecedented increase in the global population. We have learned our lessons about large-scale farming through crises involving animal diseases, animal welfare and soil exhaustion.
In consequence of these events, we have been seeing an increase in smallholder farmers across the globe. When you look at those smallholder farms today, however, they have the same structure as the farms in the 1950s. With one big difference: they already know the outcome of industrial farming. Those valuable lessons and experiences allow them to better define their own direction. And their approach is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture. Minister Carola Schouten recently presented a plan to work towards a fully circular agriculture by 2030.
Circular agriculture
By definition, circular agriculture is ‘zero waste,’ writes Wageningen University and Research in their Circular Agrofood System dossier. This means that all products leaving a farm are re-used. Only 30% of crops are suitable for human consumption, but the other 70% can be used in the production of animal feed. The manure of the cattle can be used to replenish the soil and benefit the growth of crops. A potentially endless loop.
Digital agriculture
The other major shift in modern agriculture is, in contrast to circular agriculture, unique to the 21st century: digital farming. Not fertilizers, but bytes are now revolutionizing farming. How can we combine these new technologies with the way of working and create a new sustainable way of farming? The first one is the industrialized way of farming that we call Digital Yield, and the other is smallholder farming that we call the Digital Donkey.
Digital agriculture is particularly revolutionary for smallholder farmers. Without having to invest in large and expensive machinery, the Digital Donkey profits from mobile applications and other technical solutions that help them in growing crops successfully – with an increasingly less negative impact on the environment. On megafarms, digitalization can also make a big difference. They may use hardware, such as sensors in the soil, to collect data and software to assemble, process and analyze data. Access to and understanding of this data transforms the decision-making processes at farms – small and large.
Event: Bytes against hunger
At our upcoming event “Digital Agriculture, Bytes Against Hunger,” we dive into the various ways in which digital agriculture is changing farming in revolutionary ways. Moreover, we zoom in on what changes to the industry are necessary in the face of challenges like climate change, the growing world population, and the increasingly loud calls for far-reaching sustainability.
Join us on November 14, in Utrecht! [link to registration]
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