Innovative approaches for the future of agricultural production
Making agricultural production sustainable is one of the key tasks for humanity in the 21st century.
Innovative agriculture systems and land-efficient forms of production may be able to avoid conflicting goals in the production and use of food. In this context, the preservation of the environmental resources air, water, soil and biodiversity as well as the fulfillment of relevant environmental or climate protection goals are important requirements.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) initiated the Agricultural Systems of the Future funding initiative to research and test possible scenarios for the future of agriculture.
Since 2019, the BMBF has been subsidising a total of eight research consortia with a total of nearly 43 million euros to develop cross-disciplinary alternative approaches over the next five years.
Merely optimising existing processes is not sufficient to meet the tremendous challenges of the future. New and in part unconventional approaches for the future of agricultural production are thus being pursued in the consortia.
In terms of agriculture 4.0 and corresponding bioeconomic principles, smart and high technology, artificial intelligence (AI), digitalization and resource-efficient closed energy and material cycles play a central role. The consortia are examining alternative production systems extending from the rural to the urban space.
