Provided by: Bayer
Precision agriculture: an opportunity for nature-inclusive?
Precision agriculture offers opportunities for making the agricultural sector more sustainable. Optimizing in time, place and quantity can save raw materials and land and prevent emissions to the environment.
Precision farming is gaining momentum. Developments in sensor technology, data sciences, ICT infrastructure and (fine) mechanics offer farmers tools with which they can work more precisely. A development that, in addition to the possible opportunities, also raises questions.
On Friday 26 January this was discussed at the Bayer Forward Farm in Abbenes (North Holland). The central question was: can precision agriculture make agricultural nature more inclusive? The workshop 'High-tech meets Nature' was an initiative of the Noord-Holland Nature and Environment Federation and Bayer.
Workshop
Sijas Akkerman of the Nature and Environment Federation welcomed the participants and placed the workshop in the perspective of the Living Lab Nature Inclusive Agriculture, part of Green Capital of the province of North Holland. 3 speakers introduced the workshop.
Joris Roskam of Bayer kicked off with a number of practical examples of combining nature and technology from the Bayer Forward Farm network. Anne Bruinsma from FarmHack outlined how precision agriculture is now applied and emphasized that good access to collected data is crucial for seizing opportunities. Corne Kempenaar of the WUR, Wageningen Plant Research outlined the state of the art with a view to the future. Precision makes strip farming possible, among other things.
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With the help of precision agriculture run-off of the plot can be mapped.
The pros and cons were then listed in a sub-session, after which a vigorous debate followed, led by Hinse Boonstra of Bayer. Critical questions about the power of large companies, open data and the farmer's relationship with nature were interspersed with optimism about greater insight for growers and society, less emissions due to more precision and the appeal of high-tech for young people.
The discussion ended with the sober comment that precision is an instrument and that the method of application ultimately determines whether or not a contribution is made to the further sustainability of agriculture.
Information
From the meeting are a report and the presentations of Anne Bruinsma, Corne Kempenaar en Joris Roskam readily available.
If you have any questions about this, please contact Hinse Boonstra (hinse.boonstra@bayer.com, 06 46024177).
