Summary Digitalisation offers the Dutch greenhouse
knowledge, and the creation of awareness and
horticulture chain the opportunity to (once again)
knowledge amongst users (such as the production
become world leaders in vegetables and ornamental
companies)
products That is the core of the ‘Feeding and Greening the Megacities’ strategy, which consists
There is also a third level of digitalisation: digital
of the pillars Knowledge & Innovation, Selling
transformation. This involves a fundamental
products and services to (residents of ) Western
change to the business model, chain processes and
European megacities, and the International sales of
business processes and the employees, through
such concepts.
the application and acceptance of technological innovations. This is also referred to as ‘Horticulture
These pillars can to a large extent be realised
4.0’. Digital transformation is the next industrial
by using new technologies. This will enable the
revolution.
sector to meet challenges in the areas of securing green knowledge, establishing short chains, and
Digital transformation is not a short-term process,
responding to consumer desires.
and it’s certainly not something that will happen overnight. It’s hard to predict what the digital
The sector is no stranger to the use of digital
transformation of the sector will look like. The first
technologies. The Dutch greenhouse horticulture
outlines are already visible; for example, growing as
chain has made great strides in recent decades.
a service is expected to rise.
A large amount of information has already been digitised (e.g. auction paperwork), and there are
So on one hand, this third level is difficult to predict,
also business processes (such as climate control)
but the sector can certainly prepare for the digital
that have been fully computerised for many years.
transformation by, for example, working on making
This means that the sector has already made
data widely accessible, developing data standards,
considerable progress in the first two levels of
and continuing to work on awareness and an open
digitalisation, namely digitisation (converting
attitude amongst business owners.
information from a physical to a digital format) and digitalisation (using digital information to set up
Because no matter how digital the future is, it’s
processes).
people who are in charge. But in order to do that they – the business owner or the employee – must
There are still concrete tasks remaining in the
have the right competences. So digitalisation also
second level. For example there is room for decision
places demands on the ‘humanware’ in the sector.
support systems to be established in various links of the chain. Autonomous cultivation is a clear example of this; it is the domain of robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensors, vision technology and mechatronics, amongst others. These technologies undergo further market development autonomously; no joint, co-operative actions are required. But the sector does need to ensure that the preconditions are present for these technologies to succeed. These preconditions are a good ecosystem, the digitalisation of green
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