Courtesy of Direct Driller magazine

Q: The advancing climate change, increasing loss of biodiversity, the growing population and the associated global demand for resources will shape future arable farming. How can these challenges be met? 

I believe we need to become much more open to everything that can be roughly categorized as innovation in the direction of greater sustainability. The theme of the field days “Out of the box” shows this. 

We naturally find it difficult to understand progress in terms of questioning the familiar and looking for something new. Especially when the familiar works quite well in the short term. In the entire toolbox of innovations, we must never exclude anything from the start because the problem determines the solution, and not the other way around. 

Neither 100% organic farming, 100% smart farming nor 100% genetic engineering will help us, but it will probably be a mixture of everything. 

Q: Are there any conflicting interests between production and ecology. Which innovations benefit both goals equally? 

Admittedly, some conflicts of interest cannot be resolved even with the best formulations, nor can they be resolved with technical progress. The trivial wisdom that where there is a dense crop of wheat, there will not be enough flowers for pollinating insects is a fact. 

And the fact that we need this wheat population for land productivity is not something we can change much with innovations. It is much more a question of achieving a better balance. The concept of productivity plays a role…