#tffsummit

Global agribusiness BASF understands the diverse challenges farmers face every day around the world. To help more people learn about the complex decisions farmers must make, they have developed an interactive online game that allows anyone to virtually manage a crop field from their computers. As supporters of the TFF Global Summit, we invited the BASF team to share their Sustainable Farm Game with the TFF Community as part of the Next-Gen Assemblies at our TFF Summit.

We spoke to BASF’s Andy Beadle about the challenges BASF are working to solve, and how TFF’s approach to next generation innovation can help us feed and nourish 9+Billion people in 2050.

“The connections that we make at events like this, people working together in completely different ways, I’m sure will deliver new innovations” - Andy Beadle, BASF

TFF: What does Food & Nutrition security mean to you?

Andy Beadle: Everything: because we believe that every man, woman and child must have access to healthy and nutritious feed now and in the future – it is essential for the quality of life.

TFF: How can Next-Generation Innovation help?

Andy Beadle: As a society we have to do more to develop robust systems that ensure long term food security. Only game changing thinking, relentless innovation and ambitious investments in new technologies will help us meet the challenges that we face.

TFF: Can you describe the main challenge the BASF Sustainable Farm Game explored at the TFF Global Summit?

Andy Beadle: Every thought for food, to a lesser or greater extent, starts with somebody (be it a farmer, an individual or a collective) putting a seed into a growing medium, typically the soil, with the expectation that they will harvest something that can be turned into food to feed a hungry planet. The main challenges that our session explored are two fold: (i) farming is an inherently complex business, and (ii) farming sustainably is all about trade offs – there is no free lunch. Our session invited participants and would-be farmers to manage a virtual farm sustainably over a number of crop production seasons.

TFF: In one sentence, can you tell us how are you helping feed 9+ Billion people by 2050?

Andy Beadle: We recognise that we have to do more and commit to play our part thorough: (i) the relentless development of the innovative solutions that farmers need, (ii) investing in our employees’ creativity and energy and (iii) by reaching out to all interested in food security and nutrition to harness our collective skills to build a movement for sustainable agriculture.

Photo by Jelmer de Haas

Global agribusiness Bayer is on a mission to increase youth education about food and farming. One of the ways they do this is through their Youth Ag-Summit, a bi-annual week-long event that brings together young leaders from around the world to learn more about the global challenges facing the industry. 

TFF loves this event, and we have been collaborating with the Youth Ag-Summit for two years now. At our own TFF Global Summit in Amsterdam, we also worked with Bayer to run a Challenge Clinic on “Healthy Fields in 2050″ as part of our Next Gen Assemblies.

“A lot of young people just have lost the connection with agriculture, for example they live in big cities and don’t know how their food is produced.” - Valerie Puetz, Bayer

The Next-Gen Assemblies are TFF’s unique take on conference workshops - in our version, every participant is a speaker, and every speaker is a participant. Challenge Clinics provide an opportunity for businesses to bring the real challenges they are facing to our TFF community and receive targeted insights in return.

“We  connect with young people around the world, and the Thought For Food Summit is the best place to do that” - Valerie Puetz

The Challenge Clinic session started with a 15-minute introduction to Digital Farming, and then participants broke into small groups to create solutions on how agtech can help to create healthier fields by 2050. 

Bayer was impressed with the meaningful dialogue and connections that resulted from their session. They also received new and unexpected ideas from the TFF Community to take back to the office.

This year’s TFF Global Summit in Amsterdam was all about exploring ‘what’s next’ - not only in food in agriculture, but also in our world that is changing faster than ever before. It was an important moment in time for our community of next generation innovators to come together and define what we stand for, where we want to go, and how are we going to get there. 

In addition to building bridges of understanding and support across countries, disciplines and generations, we also focused on bringing the world of disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship together with incumbent organizations, such as multinational agribusinesses. 

One company was particularly interested in engaging in open dialogue and learning from the next generation - Monsanto.

“We want to understand the hopes and dreams of this generation” - Brian Carroll, External Communications Manager, EMEA, Monsanto

The TFF Global Summit provided the opportunity to engage in very honest discussions and debates with a diverse group of next-generation innovators from 38+ countries. These innovators shared their own challenges and perspectives on the important topics they care about in food and ag, including smallholder farmer challenges and opportunities, GMO use, the rise of biohacking and intellectual property and seeds. 

The TFF Summit also integrated new interactive formats into the program called Next Gen Assemblies, which included maker labs, challenge clinics, live podcasts, changemaker masterclasses, and even fail fests, where participants publicly shared their biggest “failures” in the spirit of learning. The Next Gen Assemblies brought to life the new ways in which the next generation is thinking and working.

“What I think is really great about a platform like TFF, is that you have all of these young people coming in with all of these creative ideas and they’re challenging the status quo” - Brian Carroll

Women are the backbone of agriculture, particularly in developing countries. Yet, they often don’t have the same access to land, credit and inputs as men. As part of the TFF Summit that took place in May 2017 in Amsterdam, participants explored how we can educate and empower women in agriculture and close the gender gap in order to improve food and nutrition security. 

Alongside the TFF team, Syngenta’s Head of LTO Policy, Nemora Reche, ran an interactive Challenge Clinic to gather next generation perspectives on the challenges and opportunities women in agriculture face around the world. 

Photo by Jelmer de Haas

The two-hour Challenge Clinic took place as part of the Next-Gen Assemblies that occurred on Day 1 of the TFF Summit. Next-Gen Assemblies are TFF’s unique take on conference workshops and break-out sessions. In our version, every participant is a speaker, and every speaker a participant. For this Challenge Clinic, Syngenta brought their real challenges regarding the topic of women in agriculture to the TFF community and received targeted insights in return.

Participants worked in groups to learn from each other and brainstorm short and long-term solutions. One of the biggest takeaways was that focusing on women comes naturally to next generation innovators, who tend to inherently embrace diversity and collaboration when it comes to business. (To learn more about the values and attitudes that drive next generation innovators, check out the new TFF Playbook on ‘next generation innovation’!)

“Bringing these challenges to discuss with the next generation and hearing different perspectives and different insights is what ties me to TFF.” - Nemora Reche, Syngenta

This year the Thought for Food global summit was hosted on the 13th & 14th of February in the picturistic city of Lisbon. Words can’t fully describe what took place over these two days and I’m sure those who attended would share my sentiments. Thought for Food is a community, global movement and family dedicated to tackling the global challenge of feeding the estimated 9 billion people through…