Showcase Arable Crops & Animal Breeeding

About TERRENA

TERRENA is a cooperative of farmers, based in the Northwest of France and the parent company of an agrifood group. With 20,992 farmer members and 13,587 employees, Terrena is one of the leading agricultural and agrifood players in France. On the upstream sector (farming), Terrena provides its farmer members with inputs (seeds, pesticides, animal feed, energy, etc.) and advice (crop management, Decision Support Tools, precision farming solutions, traceability software, etc.).

TERRENA supports all types of agriculture, all farm models and all production methods. In 2008, the board of the coop decided to put agroecology on its forefront. The objectives are to:

maintain high yield production and
reduce the use of non-renewable inputs of its farmer members.

Digitalisation is already considered by Terrena teams as a way to enable agroecology.

The showcase

French showcase is based on 2 of the 15 local areas of the coop, gathering 30 farmers (arable crops, seed producers and animal breeders) and their crop advisers. The showcase is focused on precision farming solutions, such as soil resistivity maps to adapt quantity of inputs (seeds and PK fertilizers) and satellite images to manage N fertilization on wheat and oilseed rape.

Currently, several technological bricks are already existing (sensors, algorithms, smart tractors and smart implements) but some links seem to be missing between these bricks, so that unfortunately this digitalised farming tool are not spreading as easily as planned among farmers.

After a first stage of collecting existing technologies and identifying the reasons for their non-use, PATH2DEA partners will provide local players (farmers, advisers, machinery dealers, banks, insurances) with the means to overcome the identified barriers. In particular, one measure could be to transfer the task-maps, received on the farmer’s computer, to the electronic tractor consoles.

These involved local farmers will be the early adopters, allowing the knowledge acquired to be deployed in a second phase within the overall coop’s network.

Key persons involved

Bertrand PINEL, Innovation Manager
Didier BARBA, Regional Crop Adviser and local facilitator