Sustainability in CEA

 

A better world through positive SDG Impact.

Many speakers and exhibitors on this year’s Greentech will focus on technical solutions to minimize CO2 emissions. I will only briefly comment on one of our technical solutions later, but not focus on them in this presentation. They are of course very valuable and extremely important to avoid the disasters that are awaiting us if we continue on the road we have been on the last 200 years. Avoid disasters is how my feeling is on pessimistic days – it is already very close to 12 o’clock. But today I prefer to take the optimistic view – create a better world.

My  name is  Freerk Visser, and I speak to you in my role as Program Manager Sustainability at Batenburg Techniek, mother company of Hoogendoorn Growth Management and LetsGrow.com.

A better world! It may sound like an idealistic, somewhat “head in the cloud” idea but be aware, there are well defined goals with specific targets and performance indicators that clearly specify how a better world should look like. 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by all UN member states in 2015 – a blueprint for prosperity for our planet earth and its nearly 8 billion inhabitants. An urgent call for action to end poverty and inequality, while at the same time tackling climate action and preserving our oceans and our forests. A sustainable road to 2030.

Talking about climate action, we usually think about reducing our own CO2 footprint. For a company, an organization this means gas and electricity, cars and other transportation, and materials and energy used in production processes. For a company like ours, creating software and dealing with knowledge, data and algorithms, our CO2 footprint is minimal compared to the impact we can have on sustainability for our customers, our positive impact on many of the sustainable development goals. This is one of the methods we use at Batenburg Techniek to measure our performance on sustainability. We picked 6 of the 17 SDGs, and we track our score, our positive impact on each of them. For us at Hoogendoorn SDG2 is the most important. Zero hunger is the very short description of SDG2, but if you drill down to the targets for this goal, promote sustainable agriculture is one of them, and that is where we – as sector Controlled Environment Agriculture can of course play an important role. I will come back to this at the end of my presentation.

A short sidestep. A study in 2021 by amongst others Wageningen University investigated the potential impact  of growing tomatoes in high tech greenhouses on 7 relevant SDGs. Amongst them of course SDG2 (zero hunger), SDG3 (good health) and SDG6 (clean water). But also SDG15 (Life on Land and biodiversity) .

I will not go into detail, but the general finding was that this method of growing food has a positive impact on all of the selected SDGs, with the exception of one – SDG7 – energy use.

We know that of course, and the current gas prices have once again demonstrated this clearly. But possibilities for improvement are huge, and many technical solutions are on display at this Greentech exhibition.

For Hoogendoorn (software) and LetsGrow.com (data), impact far exceeds our own CO2 footprint, obviously this is different for companies like BOAL, where material matters. Or for Koppert that has an altogether different impact on sustainability. Of course I will leave this to the other speakers.

Sustainability is more than the environment. Investors often speak about ESG - Environment, Social and Governance when they speak about a sustainable investment portfolio. Large investors are entering the attractive area of Controlled Environment Agriculture, and not only because of its attractiveness on financial ROI, but also because of the potential for positive impact. Portfolios with a high risk for climate change may lose value in the near future, so you’d better change towards sustainability now.

Batenburg Techniek is fully owned by such an investor, a so-called Family Office, with an ambitious plan to be the most sustainable Family Office in Europe.  This calls for action on all 3 aspects of ESG. Environment I have mentioned already. Social deals with physical and social safety for all our employees, with education and development, with employee satisfaction, but also with diversity and inclusion. Governance deals with doing honest business, fair trade, with transparency, and anti-corruption. Be aware that these aspects are also covered in the Sustainable Development Goals. For example SDG4 about education and SDG5 about gender equality.

Our sector can also play a role in these goals. With all our Dutch knowledge we can teach the rest of the world our methods of growing food in a sustainable way, and thus not only contribute to SDG2 zero hunger, but also to SDG4 Education.  We can bring greenhouses to the cities in developing countries where large communities of people live, and have a positive impact on SDG8 – decent work and economic growth.

But - sustainability is also a buzzword. I do not think you can find one exhibitor in this year’s Greentech that does not use the word somewhere in their marketing. This is good – the subject is finally on everybody’s agenda. But what does it really mean, how positive is your impact? Do you do sustainability like you do R&D, or HR? You have an HR department but do you really care about your people? You are sustainable, but are you really making progress? Or are you like the burglar who says “I robbed 10 houses last year, and this year I have robbed only 5, does that make me a better burglar?”

One of the buzzwords in Hoogendoorn’s marketing campaigns is Autonomous Growing. It is a buzzword for many others as well, but luckily we have evidence to show what this really means, when we won the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge in 2020. I am proud to be part of that team. Plant Empowerment, the use of data, domain knowledge and intelligent algorithms can definitely make a difference – more with less. This is what I meant when I spoke earlier about the very small impact we have as a company when we minimize the CO2 footprint of our office and our cars, and the huge impact we can have when we produce 20% more vegetables per m², with up to 20% less input in gas, electricity and other inputs.

Prove that you are on the right track. Certification with a well-established certification office is another way of proving where you are on the road to sustainability, and setting targets for continuous improvement.

And if the proof is there – be proud and tell it. Our sector needs the attention for positive impact – we are under attack of environmentalists because of the huge need for fossil fuel in greenhouses.

Our investor is B Corp certified. B Cope certification means that you meet the highest standards on social and environmental performance. I am proud to be in this investment portfolio. An ambitious investor like this forces us at Hoogendoorn and LetsGrow.com to make real progress.

B Corp companies can be recognized as Best for the World. And thus we close the circle with my opening words. “Towards a better world”.