After six years, TransForum ceased to exist in December 2010. A periode has come to an end in which TransForum enthusiastically worked together with its partners on innovative experiments with sustainable agriculture. An end that, at the same time, is the beginning of a wide transition toward a more sustainable agricultural sector.

The almost 100 projects were the core of the innovation programme. These projects have realised innovations that are now used in every day practice. Innovations that show how economic gains can go together with social and environmental gains. The results of these projects are captured in hundreds of publications, books, networks and courses. These are the basis for a further development of the transition toward a more sustainable agricultural sector worldwide.

The results of the individual projects can be found in the projects section. Apart from the individual results of the completed innovative and practical projects, scientific projects and knowledge projects, we have worked on overarching results of the programme. These final results are captured in the publication Growing toward a sustainable agro-sector - the results of six years TransForum (in Dutch only). Here, you can read everything about the work of TransForum and especially how the results can benefit your work.

Some main conclusions follow below:

Ongoing interaction indispensable, opposites become partners

Ongoing interaction between agriculture and its metropolitan environment is indispensable for the more sustainable development of agriculture in the Netherlands. Through this, new connections between agriculture and the city are generated. These act as a source of inspiration for innovation, are profitable, respect the environment and improve the welfare of both human beings and animals.

The big gap between producer and consumer mean that there is little mutual understanding. The way in which agricultural entrepreneurs go about their work must be consistent with the standards and values of the general public and consumers. By skilfully exploring possible connections between the public's needs and what agriculture can offer, agriculture is able to create added value for urban dwellers.

Through the interaction between agriculture and its metropolitan environment new ideas are generated for innovations conducive to greater sustainability.

 

New alliances: indispensable for sustainable development

Successful agricultural entrepreneurs manage to deliver added value in new areas of activity different from traditional agricultural products and services. In doing so they are contributing to more sustainable development. This will succeed only if they continue to cooperate with allies some of whom will be new and who will often come from an unexpected quarter. This cooperation generates the necessary political and public support for their new activity.

A characteristic feature of all forms of metropolitan agriculture is the new connections that these involve. This calls for cooperation with industries and sectors that have not traditionally been partners of agriculture. Examples include the cooperation between agriculture and care institutions, that between agriculture (as an energy producer) and energy companies and that between oil refineries (as CO2 suppliers) and horticulture. By creating such cooperative links it becomes possible to turn by-products and residual products into something of value. Cooperation with governments and non-governmental organisations is also required, in that innovations nearly always run into obstacles as they do not fit in with the existing legislation and regulations. If an entrepreneur wants to recoup his investments in sustainability-promoting innovations, there need to be customers at the end of the chain who can see the innovative added value and who are prepared to pay for it. Public support is therefore a precondition for successful innovations. It is therefore necessary for governments and non-governmental organisations to be drawn into such innovative projects at an early stage.

This calls for intensive cooperation among parties who may never have dealt with one another before and who will in certain cases even have been used to seeing each other as "the opponent". In the case of successful innovations in the field of more sustainable agriculture, knowledge institutes, governments, non-governmental organisations and entrepreneurs were all closely involved.

Joining forces for a sustainable future not just by jointly drawing up plans but also by investing and harvesting together

Drawing up plans alone is not sufficient for the more sustainable development needed: this also calls for innovations in everyday practice. These arise only from joint investment and harvesting. That shared responsibility calls for new roles and actions on the part of both public and private actors.

We have also learned that drawing up plans for sustainabilisation is not sufficient in itself. This also calls for innovations in everyday practice - which can come about only given collective investment and harvesting. In our view that shared responsibility calls for new roles and actions on the part of both public and private actors.

If it is our ambition in the Netherlands to encourage agricultural innovations on a scale larger than in our practical projects that will also genuinely result in the more sustainable development of the agrifood sector, this will in our view require a collectively established agro-innovation system. This calls for a coherent system in which the barriers on which innovations often come to grief are eliminated. Highly divergent actors, both public and private, need to have a role in such an agro-innovation system. Apart from knowledge institutes, governments, non-governmental organisations and entrepreneurs, project developers and investors will certainly also need to be involved.