Researcher and architect Marten Kuijpers from Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) gave two lectures at the Summerschools 21 @the countryside:
Automated Landscapes
and
The Wieringermeer polder and one of its farmers
His conclusions:
Farming is increasingly robotized but still not fully automated. We need – a few – human beings to organize food production.
Large datacenterbuildings take the place of crop fields. Sicco Mansholt is ‘one of the polder farmers’ and also one of the founders, and later a critic, of EU-farming policies. Close to where his farm in the Netherlands was, you will now find two plots of land called ‘NIMBLE’ and ‘PARTHEN’, which Marten Kuijpers explained, are now in possession of Google and Microsoft.
We will publish Marten Kuijpers’ research together with his answers on the questions from the public. In the publication (forthcoming) with all results from our summerschools’ work on the theme ‘@the countryside’
Wendorf Academy 