Previously on Digital Food

January: Bühler: Digitizing Processing Food Machinery
Bühler Group is one of the foremost innovators in the food production realm. By its milling machines it can assure the origin and quality of commodities through the production of equipment used in processing plants, Bühler uses the company's unique position to implement more sustainable solutions, with goals in place to ensure food safety, climate protection, resource efficiency and more.

For this webinar, we were joined by Santiago Cajaraville Fernando, blockchain expert, and Edyta Margas, Global Head of Food Safety at Bühler. We heard from them regarding some of their solutions for food safety and how their Blockchain platform can support data sharing and traceability through value chains.


February: PATS Drones: Automated Insect Control
Insect control in horticulture is an issue farmers and food producers have faced for decades. How do we ensure that insects are not decimating our produce or creating unusable and wasted food? PATS Drones began to solve this exact problem. Through their drone system, they aim to help producers provide more sustainable produce without the risk of chemical pesticides.

For this webinar, we were joined by Bram Tijmons, CEO and co-founder of PATS Indoor Drone System. Tijmons will discuss how drones are able to enact a system of automated insect control and how this has been implemented since their conception.


March: Solidaridad: fair farm data and CSRD
Solidaridad is an international civil society organization with over 50 years of experience in developing solutions to make communities more resilient. Solidaridad helps trade to be fair. Recently, the organization realized data determine the balance of power in the value chain. Fair trade needs fair data. That’s why Solidaridad decided farmers mustn’t wait for sustainability requirements from buyers, but should set up their own format to be an equal partner in the sustainable food chain.

The initiative is especially important as the EU pushes forward its CSRD reporting rules requiring retail organizations and processing companies to specify their scope 3 emissions policies. Scope 3, obviously, is all about farm level. No major European food processing or retailing company can do without farm data anymore. All of a sudden an NGO-like institution is at the heart of European legislation.

For this webinar, we heard from Frederik Claassen, Head of Policy and coordinator of the Fair Farm Project. Claassen explained how joint data formats will empower farmers in the international food chain, the planning of the Fair Farm Data project and the people and partnering organizations behind it.


April: Let’s Grow: Data Driven Plant Growing
Greenhouse horticulture has become one of the preferred methods of farming sustainably. Taking into consideration the resources and altered steps to greenhouse growing, how can we ensure that we are attaining the maximum yield at a sustainable level? Let’s Grow hopes to help answer this question. Through the use of collected and analysed data, Let’s Grow is able to help their consumers gain further insight into what is happening in your greenhouse at all times.

For this webinar, we were joined by Martin van Tol, Sales Manager at Let’s Grow. Van Tol discussed how Let’s Grow is able to use data to optimise plant growing in greenhouses. We also focused the discussion onto what data is collected and how it’s used to attain maximum output of food production, while still keeping sustainability in mind.

Watch Martin and Tiffany in our fourth Digital Food Webinar in this series.


May: Vertical Farm Institute: Using Models to Plan Cities and its Food Supply
Guaranteeing food supply for large cities where populations continue to increase at an exponential rate is a difficult task. The Vertical Farm Institute is a private research company that aims to implement urban vertical farming. The hope is that they can reduce the land, water and energy consumption that is required for farming through their vertical farming plan.

For this webinar, we were joined by Tiffany Tsui, Chief Strategy Officer and Digital Food Moderator, and Daniel Podmirseg, CEO of VFI, to discuss how the Vertical Farm Institute uses models to plan new cities and is able to ensure the city’s food supply. We also discuss the sustainability outcomes of this project, and the long term benefits it can incite.

Watch Daniel and Tiffany in our fifth Digital Food Webinar in this series.


Nijsen: Turning Food into Feed Fighting Scope 3 Climate Change
Nijsen transforms around 2.300 different food by-products, 100.000 ton annually, into feed. The company plans the volume flows, taking quality and quantity (e.g., ingredients) into account, and transforms this into high-quality homogeneous feed ingredients.

Nijsen’s Managing Director John Geurts and Business Development Manager Karel van der Velden will show how they plan incoming ‘waste’ ingredients, and how data turn them into valuable feed products.

Watch John and Karel to hear more about processing by-products from the food industry into unique Food-For-Feed raw materials.