Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam Opened CAPIGI 2011

15 April 2011

Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, Ms Carolien Gehrels Welcomed the participants of CAPIGI 2011 by saying:

"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to offer you a warm welcome to Amsterdam. I am delighted to have the honour today of speaking to you first at the fourth Community on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo Information congress. When you think of Amsterdam, how many of you immediately think about agriculture or green spaces? Not many, probably. And yet 12% of our territory is agricultural land, 2.3% is woodland and natural environment and almost 25% is inland waterways. This makes Amsterdam one of the greenest cities in Europe."

"I am an Amsterdam alderperson in charge of portfolios that include Economic Affairs, Art and Culture, water management, monuments and local media. You might be thinking ‘Sounds like they've sent the wrong person - there's nothing in the list about agriculture, nothing about geo-information'. But as an alderperson here you get involved with all sorts of matters that you wouldn't immediately connect with the city: before I began I could not have imagined that most of the questions I get asked by journalists would be about the trouble caused by fallow deer in a piece of Amsterdam territory in the dunes.

Another recent example: The Mayor and I visited the Chinese ambassador not so long ago. He asked us to help with a project in the field of agriculture. Because Amsterdam does not know very much about this area and, as you probably know, the real expertise can be found in Wageningen, the Mayor phoned Mr Dijkhuizen, the chairman of the Board of Governors at the University of Wageningen to ask if he could help to tackle the problem. Mr Dijkhuizen indicated that he would be delighted to link his university with the Amsterdam brand. And that's exactly what we want too, the other way round.

Looking across the Boundaries and Working Together
Although many citizens of Amsterdam are still not accustomed to thinking further than the city limits, regional cooperation is getting stronger all the time. We are a diverse region with a great deal to offer. Amsterdam has been a crossroads for enterprising merchants and adventurous travellers for hundreds of years. We aim to compete with cities like London and Paris.

To achieve that, the business community, governments and knowledge institutions - all represented here - need to work together.

That is what we are doing at the Economic Development Board of the Amsterdam metropolitan region. In the past, we have missed economic opportunities because we didn't have a joint vision, utilization of resources was fragmentary and there was a mismatch between the supply and demand in knowledge institutions and businesses, but now, at the Board, we want to work together on the future of the region.

Strengths of the Amsterdam Region

The Amsterdam metropolitan area has a number of important trump cards, to make it a more innovative and economically strong area. It has several strong clusters that can play a pioneering role nationally and even internationally. There are many market leaders in the business community in the Amsterdam metropolitan region and the knowledge institutions are involved in research that puts them at the top of the global league.
Within our Economic Development Board, we can distinguish seven clusters, including Red Life Sciences - human health -, the Creative Industry, and Food & Flowers. Each of these clusters works on their own innovation strategies, but also looks explicitly at the cross-overs between the clusters.

The Food & Flowers cluster focuses strongly on the development of Green Life Sciences in our region. For example by creating new varieties that can manage with less resources, so that they can also be grown on dry ground in third world countries, for instance.

As a region, we would like to have a university that offers Green Life Science studies that fit in well, with the breeding stations located here. This is why we cooperate with Wageningen. Why do we want this? Once again, it has to do with the name Amsterdam. Students want to study here. Simply because Amsterdam is a very attractive city for students.

Geo-information: Essential in Agriculture, but also in the City

However, you are here at the CAPIGI congress, where for the next three days you will be presented with a variety of state-of-the-art, innovative applications aimed at making the use of geo-information in agricultural policy future-oriented.
While I was preparing this speech, I was reminded of two photos I saw recently in an exhibition at our Monuments Bureau. They were photos of the Munt square in Amsterdam, looking towards where the Amsterdam Music Theatre is located now. One of the photos was taken in the 1950s, the other round 2005. On both photos you could see clearly that it was the Munt square, especially because of the monumental Munt Tower that marks the location. But if you looked more closely, you could see that every paving stone, every single detail had changed. In fact, everything was different and yet everything was the same.

As a layman, that is how I look at the green farmlands I sometimes see when I am passing in the car or the train. The photo is the same, but what you can't see is that, these days, the farmer has access to aerial photos, satellite images, planned and driven tracks, plot boundaries measured precisely to the centimetre and many other forms of geo-information that support the running of his business. And if I looked closely, I would see the difference with the 1950s as well. Every seed is planted as straight as a die, which can save the farmer up to 30% of the costs.

I understand that some farmers plan their work in the office and send the digital planning to the tractor, which then carries out the work almost entirely independently. It is amazing what you can do with today's technology and that sometimes makes me feel a little sentimental. But then, maybe that's a good thing too. After all, without innovation there would be no progress.

In Conclusion
There is a Dutch saying: ‘What a farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat.' Perhaps this will apply to you when you have your dinner tomorrow evening on a river tour boat, but as far as using new technologies are concerned, your sector has certainly acquired the taste.

I wish you a fruitful three days and hope that you will be able to make the best possible use of the opportunities for networking, interaction and exchanging ideas. Together you can make sure that the use of geo-information yields fertile ground, which will allow us to reap many benefits here in the region and in the world in the years to come. I expect you will come back to Amsterdam for a visit, doing business or going to a next congress. Thank you for being here."