Maren Schoormans, Chief Business Development Officer at Viscon Group shares his vision on 2021.

“The Covid crisis has boosted the global awareness of the need for better local food systems. Technology advances rapidly, we must connect it to domain expertise in horticulture. GreenTech is on the forefront, connecting people and ideas to grow the movement."

One of the reasons I always loved horticulture is the craftsmanship of growers and continuous innovation that was needed to keep efficiency and profitability on track. Efficiency remains a necessity but the focus has shifted to scalability and exploring new ways to grow plants, using technology. This is nothing new, but the acceleration something we’ve never seen before. As technology trend watcher Christian Kromme brilliantly explained at a previous edition of GreenTech, technology progress follows an ‘S-curve’ pattern. We’re about to see the next acceleration. Mankind is experiencing a social revolution and going towards a machine learning revolution. Just like it’s happening in other industries, digital technology will cause exponential improvements that will boost the adoption and scalability of controlled environment agriculture. Technology and data science are futile without the experience and domain knowledge and the magic happens when we bring those together. At Viscon Group, we want to enable the world to produce, distribute and enjoy healthy fresh food, flowers and plants. That’s what drives us every day when we turn ideas into solutions, software and machines. Online meetings kept the conversations going in the past year, and I look forward to meet existing and new friends physically in the capital of high tech horticulture.