“A trans-disciplinary approach is important from the beginning of any research (innovation) proposal in agri-food/agri-tech: the input and perspective of social scientists and economists should be part of it.”
On the 4th of February, the H-HEALTH community came together in the first Workshop of the platform to connect the community. The discussions we had within the H-HEALTH topics of human well-being, smart & digital applications, and regenerative food production, we were able to create interest and engagement with a very diverse crowd in basic and applied research, industry, organization, and start-ups alike.
With Switzerland having a huge critical mass of research-driven companies and a lot of past effort in the life sciences/healthcare business, we see our location as a chance to further enable transdisciplinary discussions to drive forward societal innovation and impact while keeping a global perspective.
Together we consolidated a variety of different ideas of which we want to highlight the following:
Farmers, health & nutrition by better "chemistry" fewer pesticides and smarter agriculture, e.g. microbiome approaches. FOCUS: farming techniques impact on health (directly) and on nutritional value of food (indirectly).
Soilscore - measure production systems and soil quality to provide added value to farmers (sustainability, carbon capture, yield optimization) and up to the consumer. FOCUS: measure effectiveness, sustainability, economics of production systems + soils
Evidence Driven, data-sharing approaches to optimize the adoption of new/improved solutions for farmers, involving farmers in the evaluation process. FOCUS: validating practices and technologies with data-driven approaches that enable data safety, security and confidentiality.
These ideas or concepts encourage us, to take the H-HEALTH Kick-off Workshop as an amazing starting point for the platform going forward. Together with the community, we want to continue to thrive for systemic change in the agricultural sector and continue to co-shape the platform together. To do so, we are planning follow-up sessions on these ideas and continue to create opportunities for further idea development, discussion and thought exchanges in the coming week. Are you interested in joining the conversation and receiving updates on the upcoming events?
Let us know by writing to sophie.schumacher@unibas.ch or alessandro.mazzetti@unibas.ch