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Innovation in agriculture

With an agricultural model that is undergoing profound changes, and given current societal and consumer expectations, the challenge for our co-operative today is to roll out innovative, responsible and effective solutions with our farmers, with the aim of conserving the soil, showing respect for nature and people, and boosting our farmers’ economic results. Much more than a change in cultivation practices, this is a real change in culture!

Our agroecological approach

Agroecology is an agricultural model which relies on the services rendered by nature to produce better yields in a way that respects people and the environment. It involves the use of a series of techniques that look at an agricultural concern as a whole, like boosting biodiversity through improvements to farms (hedges, trees, insect houses, flower strips for pollinators, etc.).

Our co-operatives devise innovative solutions with the support of farmer networks like the 30,000 Fermes and DEPHY networks. These solutions are then rolled out to all our members, with personalised support, training or workshops. 

To make our farmers’ involvement in this agroecological transition official and to recognise their efforts, our co-operatives have taken concrete steps to obtain environmental certification for their farms, a process driven by the French Ministry of Agriculture. This three-pronged approach allows for a gradual progression in a farm’s agroecological commitment. 

Our agronomic expertise

Taking an approach to effect an agroecological transition, we work hard each day to provide innovative agronomic and technological solutions to our members, in the interest of efficient, responsible agriculture and to meet societal expectations. This approach can be broken down into four lines of work:

  • Collecting objective technical and economic data through our experimental network, by setting up trials (spanning one or several years) at our members’ farms
  • Developing business intelligence (BI) tools to better streamline inputs, which take the form of advice on fungicidal optimisation (Atlas), fertilisation (Farmstar) and irrigation (Sentek)
  • Advising our farmers and enabling them to make progress by implementing tried and tested solutions suited to their operations
  • Incorporating new technologies like smart agricultural mechanisation with geolocation services, embedded sensors, multispectral imaging, and so on, in the interest of being able to adapt techniques.

This work aims to move our members’ agricultural systems towards more integrated crop protection by activating multiple levers.