AGRO’s business committee is mapping the department’s collaboration with the industry
The business committee has been mapping in which collaborative projects we are involved. The list is a good tool for identifying new, potential partnerships and maintaining existing partnerships.
In the Department of Agroecology we collaborate with a wide range of businesses, organisations and sectors. Each section’s business committee representative has contributed to creating an overall view of the collaborative projects in which we are involved, including information about what the business partners contribute and the ”value” of the collaboration. The list is a good tool for AGRO for identifying new, potential collaborators – but of course also contributes to keeping a focus on maintaining existing cooperation.
We would also like to profile concrete examples of our business collaboration and together with Janne Hansen we have chosen some articles about projects that you will soon be able to access on the business collaboration page of AGRO’s website (the Danish versions are availabale here). Some of these cases are the following:
ProvenanceDK: A project supported by Innovation Fund Denmark in which researchers from AGRO are collaborating with municipalities and the food sector to create a whole new atlas of the possibilities for producing provenance food. The project is a collaboration between Aarhus University, Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality, Slagelse Municipality/Slagelse Business Centre, Randers Municipality, Randers Rainforest, Coop Denmark, Meyers House of Food (Meyers Madhus), Hørkram Food Service, and the Central and West Jutland Development Platform for Food (Midt- og Vestjysk Udviklingsplatform for Fødevarer).
RoboWeedMaPS: A project that aims to reduce the use of herbicides. Staff from AGRO are collaborating with a series of commercial business partners to develop new technology for precision weed control that can reduce herbicide use by up to 75 percent. The project is a collaboration between Aarhus University (Department of Engineering, Department of Agroecology and Department of Environmental Science), and the companies AgroIntelli, IPMConsult, Datalogisk, IGis and Danfoil.
UniDepths: One of Agromek 2016’s three-star Europe new products has been developed with input from researchers from AGRO. This new product is a system that control sowing depth automatically with the aid of sensors and is one of just 22 out of Agromek’s total 247 new products that was awarded three stars. UniDepths can be used on even simple sowing machines and can be mounted at the factory or added later on all types of sowing machines where the drilling depth is normally adjusted manually. The system was developed by AgroIntelli in collaboration with the Department of Agroecology and the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University.
The above-mentioned products are just three of the 82 business collaboration projects on our list. In the course of this summer and autumn we will be working on describing more areas so that we can show the wide range of AGRO’s business collaboration. If your section’s representative in the business committee comes and asks you about one of your project collaborations then I hope that you will be receptive.