Farmers with a future

Welcome to the Farm of the Future website!

Farm of the Future is a Dutch initiative in which Wageningen University & Research and Dutch farmers of the future are working together on feasible solutions to the challenges faced by agriculture in the Netherlands. The farm is located in Lelystad, in the Dutch polder province of Flevoland, a region of predominantly arable farming. Our goal is to further develop this initiative into a collaborative platform involving other agricultural regions around the Netherlands. Farm of the Future hopes to build a network of international partners (businesses, research institutes, governments) working on similar initiatives.

Why a Farm of the Future?

The Farm of the Future is a resource for everyone working in the sector. It’s a hub featuring all the best practices and techniques related to agronomy, ecology and technology. Farm of the Future draws on the expertise and practice of both organic and mainstream agriculture to create a business model with sustainability at its core.

As such, Farm of the Future’s proposal is to create a middle ground with space for nature and landscapes, and where emissions are reduced as far as possible to zero. In other words: a way of farming with a future.

Farm of the Future thus offers a middle ground where nature and landscape get a place and emissions to the environment go to zero as much as possible. In short: how you can continue to farm with future.

Why a Farm of the Future?

Jan Willem Elsenga, dairy farmer in Lelystad:

125 Jersey cows: 1 million kg milk/year

"The soil in this region is of great quality, you can really achieve good yields from arable farming. But it’s important to work on maintaining good soil health. Are the harvests you reap from the land balanced with what you've fed into that land?

That’s why dairy cattle farming is so harmonious with arable farming. The by-products of arable farming that aren’t suitable for human consumption make good input for dairy farming. These include the by-products of grains, potatoes and sugar beet, for example.

They can be fed to cows, in either a processed or unprocessed form. Dairy cows at the Farm of the Future turn these by-products and grass into valuable new outputs such as milk, meat and fertiliser. The fertiliser, in turn, becomes a valuable input for the arable farming business. Because both of our businesses focus on doing a particular thing really well, their processes are fully optimised and they achieve good results."

Photo: Elly Geverink