A New Paradigm in Biosystems Engineering: Technology-4-Ecology based Agriculture

Abstract

Agricultural production worldwide is facing many challenges to be able to achieve the UN Sustainability Development Goals and international agreements with respect to environment, labour, and society. Our investigation revealed that further optimization of current farming practices with precision agriculture (PA) and precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies is insufficient to meet these challenges. Therefore, a paradigm shift is required for building the next- generation agricultural production systems that are (i) sustainable, (ii) circular, and (iii) regenerative. The Synergia research program, where this study takes place, addresses this transition through our new concept of ‘Technology 4- Ecology-based Agriculture’ (T4E-Agriculture) in the Netherlands. This concept implies that future agricultural systems have to (i) rely on natural processes as driver for agricultural ecosystems and primary productivity; (ii) be able to sense traits by focusing on following biological production processes instead of momentary states, and on biological and ecological traits in the systems instead of production traits and problem indicators only; (iii) build models based on the understanding of the underlying biological & ecological processes; and (iv) include control and management functions that focus on prevention of problems, and make smart use of biological diversity and ecological complexity. With this novel approach we are not opposing high tech to nature-based production, in the opposite, we are exploring how current and future farming technologies can enable and support truly ecology-based farming systems. This approach will be developed and validated within the Synergia research program in building next-generation (i) horticulture, (ii) dairy and (iii) arable farming systems.