Internship experiences of Maik Freitag

Everybody knows precision farming today. That it is more than just the GPS-antenna on the tractor was not new for me. But what exactly is it then? How does it lead you to be a better farmer and to cause less impact on nature?
That’s what I expected to see in my voluntarily internship at the farm and it was more than worth to spend all my vacation here.

When I came here I did not really have an idea what exactly I will experience during the internship. Quickly I recognized that a lot of interesting and trendsetting progresses are made and developed on this farm and with that I don’t just mean the machinery and technique. For the beginning I learned a lot about irrigation, precison technology, the intensity of farming in this area and potatoe growing at all, what was all completely new fields of agriculture for me.

After a few weeks -after understanding the basic ongoings on the farm- I was able to dive deeper into the big data and future trends for farming. For that I really enjoyed the open mindset of Jacob and all the discussions that we had. His knowledge in many fields of agriculture paired with an unbreakable need for innovation surprised me often. Getting the possibility to make selfdesigned fieldtrials to test different greengrops for example and to take responsability for the whole trial or the testing of new techniques on the farm (f. ex. The robot) motivated me and leaded directly to new findings for me and the farm.

Beside learning a lot I also worked on the same tasks as many interns before me: Mainly probing, calibrating, measuring potatoes and some irrigating, tractor driving, etc.

It is hard to say, what exactly I learned here. Probably I can answer this question not until a few months passed. I’ve got a lot of new input in many fields of agriculture, beginning from precision farming, to soil life, plant breeding, farm-management and a lot more and I met many interesting people here around the farm.

I want to thank the whole team of Van den Borne aardappelen, all the people that I met  and of course Jacob for providing me a unforgettable time on the farm.