‘Digital Greenhouse’ idea to regenerate horticulture industry
A ‘Digital Greenhouse’ for the horticulture industry would be one way in which the island’s industry was regenerated, according to Marc Winn of the Dandelion Foundation.
He was speaking during the visit to the island of a representative of a US initiative, Grand Farm, which describes itself as ‘a collaborative network of growers, corporations, startups, educators, researchers, government and investors working together to solve problems in agriculture through AgTech and innovation.’
Nathan Marcotte from Grand Farm was in the island at Mr Winn’s invitation and during his trip he met local politicians, paid a visit to Grow Ltd, and also gave a talk to members of Edible Guernsey, Men’s Shed and Makerspace about what Grand Farm does.
Grand Farm is based in Fargo, North Dakota, where Mr Marcotte said the biggest crop was probably sugar beets but there was also a lot of corn, wheat, durum, which is used for pasta, canola and sunflower.
It was set up in 2017 and its goal is to help solve problems facing the agriculture industry.
As an example, he said that one big problem has been the appearance of herbicide-resistant weeds.
A startup company called Aigen is at the point of demonstrating a technology that it has developed.
‘They make a small robot that’s operated in what would be considered a swarm method, so many smaller robots being used compared to maybe one larger piece of equipment,’ said Mr Marcotte.
‘That robot removes weeds through using mechanical hoes, basically.’
Grand Farm’s role is not to develop these ideas itself, but to help showcase and validate the technologies, plus provide the space and resources for them to be tested.
‘There is a lot of similarities in the communities between Guernsey and also parts of what happens in Fargo as well,’ he said.
‘Being here I’m not necessarily saying that Grand Farm is the solution but more so showing Grand Farm as an example of how we were able to take different problems that we saw in our area, and use a framework of adopting different technologies and things like that to solve the challenges,' he said.
Mr Winn said that Grand Farm was a good example of what the island might be able to establish, something along the lines of a horticultural equivalent to the Digital Greenhouse, which was established to grow the island’s digital and creative sectors.
‘Grand Farm started five years ago, and we can learn a lot about how they built that system to solve their farming challenges and we can actually run a similar process in Guernsey to say that we need to regenerate our horticultural industry or call it day.
‘We’re living in the grey space at the moment.’
