Praktikum von Pierre-Henri Derivery

I chose to join the company Van Den Borne Aardappelen for a period of 2 months because initially the company is known for the new innovative technologies they use within the farm. Secondly, my written thesis focuses on the subject of the development of new technologies in dealerships. During these 2 months I was able to discover and learn a lot of things that are not used or exploited to their full potential in France. In addition, I also learned other things such as potato cultivation, management and logistics in and around the company. All of these large-scale factors make Van den Borne an excellent company for interns who want to get an overview of a large company in the agricultural world.
During my internship which started in March, I did a wide variety of work, not always glorious but also this work is part of the development of the operation.
I will describe a few of them. I had the opportunity to participate in the potato planting period. From soil preparation to planting. The first work in the fields was the preparation of the soil using a front mower and a 6 meter tiller to make a single pass. Then I was lucky enough to be able to load Farm Trans trucks using the company's cleaning and sorting line. In addition, for the potato planting I was able to load the seed potatoes into the farm truck, I was also able to attend the soil analysis with the Dualem 21Hs soil scanner. In addition, we carried out trials in micro-plots with Jacob which consisted of planting potatoes with different mixtures of plants to capture nitrogen from the air and transmit it to the soil. Subsequently, the trials will provide an overview of emergence, yields, etc., in order to determine the impact of the vegetable mixture on the development of the potato.
Another task was to clean the ditches to facilitate the flow of water, and to prune the trees present at the edge of the fields so that the harvester, the machinery for planting and harvesting, etc. are not damaged during their passage. . In addition, in order to allow the machines to access certain fields without obstructing the passage of water in the ditches, we have placed pipes. Finally, I was able to witness the use of different drones used by the farm.

These last two months have been a great opportunity to share knowledge of new technologies with the entire Van Den Borne team, but also to discover technologies that are still untapped or very little used in France.

I am very grateful to the Van Den Borne team for welcoming me so warmly into their team and for taking the time to introduce me to their vision of the agriculture of tomorrow.

Finally, a big thank you to Jacob, Luka, Dieter, Jasper, Pjotr, Peter, Louis for these two rainy but also sunny months that I will never forget. Without forgetting another trainee, Mart, who spent these 2 months with me on the farm.

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