digital is at the heart of campaigns

Is indoor agriculture the latest innovation known to many in this world or a real revolution? The collection of data raises the question of the agricultural model created by technology, as well as the financial and material independence of farmers. “Farmers 3.0”, a documentary to be seen this Wednesday, January 18.

That’s how it is on YouTube Gilles VK farmer from Loiret. His channel It features 207 videos and has over 33,000 subscribers. Gilles Van Kampen, whose full name is IRL (in real life), is one of the many “agri-youtubers” who have flourished on the platform in recent years.

Their goals: to explain their profession, to reveal behind the scenes, so that the general public “don’t have false ideas, don’t develop irrational fears after seeing a tractor in the field” Gilles says.
But for him, and for his connected colleagues, it is above all a way to show off and test the latest high-tech equipment they use in their daily lives.

Because this generation of farmers in their thirties and forties grew up with digital equipment and technology. Gilles loves it and uses it as a decision aid.
Cartography, planting, inputs: so much data collected by his digital tools that he uses to manage his 200-hectare farm as finely as possible.

The “precision agriculture” model, a concept that emerged in the 2000s at the same time as digital agricultural tools, allows for better management of fields to optimize investments and productivity.

For the documentary Farmers 3.0, Etienne Crépin and Frédéric Schneider immersed themselves in the world of agriculture to understand the impact of digital technologies on practices.
Their conclusion: like the rest of society, today’s agriculture is digital. To varying degrees, of course, but hardware, software, and data have entered farms.

As with the rest of society, the question of usage arises. This comes all the more acutely amid fears that a sector already dependent on the chemical industry and agricultural machinery will become increasingly and irrevocably tied to software publishers.

We at Agriculteurs 3.0 will be listening with interest to Vincent and Laurent Moinard, dairy producers in the Vendée.
They have equipped their farm with two robots that manage the milking, the production of the cows, but also collect information about their health.

A very significant initial financial investment, more than €200,000, high maintenance costs, not to mention repeated mistakes: Vincent and Laurent now think that these robots work for them or vice versa …

The question of the location of technologies is not only of interest to farmers: consumers, who are increasingly interested in the agricultural model of the products they buy, pay more attention to it.
But this is where digital technology advocates a new alliance between producer and consumer, asserting itself as the privileged tool of short-circuiting and direct selling.

Etienne Crépin and Frédéric Schneider devote a large part of their research to the initiative of David Barou, an apple grower in Men-et-Loire, and his colleagues, who founded the trading site “Le Baluchon Fermier”.
Fruits, vegetables, cheese, meat, bread: everything is sold locally, organically, without intermediaries. The consumer pays on the site and collects the basket at a designated meeting point.

At the antithesis of technology whose value squeezes the farmer’s margin, digital in this case fully plays the role of bringing supply and demand together, leaving the producer free to set his own price.

An approach that the documentary tackles by promising Farmer workshop : a cooperative that distributes open source software and plans build-it-yourself tools and machines so that farmers can take them on and gain material and financial autonomy.

Thanks to the multitude of profiles, anyone looking at Farmers 3.0 will find food for thought about the proper use of digital technologies and judge their benefits or dangers.

We can smile at the attempts of Romain, a farmer’s son, to turn wary farmers into reading data by mapping their fields using a drone.the lightest agricultural machine you’ve ever seenhe jokes.
We will listen with emotion to David, another farmer’s son, pleading for technologies that bring solutions to free the farmer from the administrative tasks that weigh him down.
Taking over from his ailing father, David developed software to, among other things, better control crop rotation on plots of land. He implements this program on his parents’ old dairy farm that young breeder Dylan has just taken over.

Dylan, the happy man in this documentary, slowly gets into the business, but he doesn’t forget the important thing: he hired an employee so that he doesn’t have to take on all the responsibilities of the operation alone and feel isolated!
“If a cow escapes from the tower“he’s having fun”not a robot to pick it up !”
Creating a business rather than investing heavily is not about turning your back on technology. Dylan chose to put people first and use software for what they brought him: time savings.

Saving this time, he wants to use it, among other things, to welcome people to his farm and explain his business to them.”show them how milking is done” for example.
Not on video, but in real life.

► “Farmers 3.0”Documentary by Etienne Crépin and Frédéric Schneider Wednesday 18 January at midnight France 3 Pays de la Loire

► To see the replay on france.tv in our La France en Vrai collection

► Find all our programs on france.tv