Selected Topic

Promoting sustainable production and food sovereignty.

Project Description

While digital agriculture has received considerable attention to improve efficiency, productivity and food security, less attention has been given to the potential of digitalization towards sustainable development, for example through biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. This, in large part, can be attributed to the conflicts between goals in land management. The harmonization of these conflicting goals through an optimally balanced provision of ecosystem services, represents a major opportunity for sustainable land management.

In response to this challenge, a consortium of researchers from ten scientific institutions, led by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), is spearheading a groundbreaking initiative aimed at revolutionizing agriculture. This project, known as the “Digital Agricultural Knowledge and Information System”, is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. DAKIS aims to integrate ecosystem service and biodiversity assessment information with resource efficiency methodologies into the decision-making processes of farmers. Central to DAKIS is the integration of digitization tools, such as sensors, computer models, and robotics to enhance economic efficiency and simultaneously promote environmental sustainability in agricultural practices. By introducing innovative, site-specific farming techniques, DAKIS aims to harmonize food production with the preservation and enhancement of biodiversity and essential ecosystem services, such as clean water and fertile soils. This endeavor opens up exciting possibilities for innovative products, novel business models, and the creation of new communication channels for cooperation between farmers, consumers and society. Since 2019, over 30 researchers from diverse fields, including agricultural research, economics, sociology, computer science, and legal studies, are collaborating closely to bring this future vision to fruition.

About the Institution

The mission of ZALF is to deliver solutions for an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable agriculture – together with society.

As a contribution to overcoming global challenges such as climate change, food security, biodiversity conservation and resource scarcity, we develop and design crop systems, integrated in their landscape contexts, that combine food security with sustainability. Therefore we process complex landscape data with a unique set of experimental methods, new technologies and models as well as socio-economic approaches.

ZALF research is integrated systems research: starting from processes in soils and plants to causal relationships on the field and landscape level up to global impacts and complex interactions between landscapes, society and economy.

According to its statutes, ZALF serves “the public welfare by communicating scientific insights to the relevant sections of the population, technical communities and business circles”. ZALF research stands explicitly for scientific excellence and social relevance.

Contact Person: Karoline Hemminger