"Smaller growers to benefit from a digital market"

"The current market has really become a kind of slot machine," according to Olaf van Kooten of InHolland Delft. "Where for many years having their own market place in the form of the vegetable auction was an important source of success for the greenhouse vegetable sector, that auction now practically does not exist anymore. A lot of products are now going directly from large growers to supermarkets. So small growers can only follow without being able to exert any influence on the price. Subsequently also the weather in Spain, for example, still plays a major role."

In a digital market, which according to Olaf "will come no matter what ", small growers can really start to participate again. Ahead of large parties such as Amazon and Google, the first steps towards such a digital market have been taken with the project. "All individual growers can connect to that market. Intelligent software can bring together the limited supply of several small growers, so that they are strong together without actually having to look for each other or see each other in person."

The digital market must become a trading channel on which producers can find the consumer effortlessly. Part of the products will, as is currently the case, still end up at the supermarkets, but a lot will also end up directly with consumers, as Olaf predicts. "It is already happening in large Chinese cities." Just like on the supply side, the system also makes it possible to come to a concrete demand on the buyers’ side. Software quickly maps the total demand for a specific type of tomato. This means that supply and demand are better aligned and fewer products will get spoiled.

The game offers students the opportunity to explore the current chain and the market, and also trading companies can introduce new personnel in a safe environment to the minefield that, according to Olaf, the trading practice is. For the time being it is only possible to explore the current market and not the future market, but the basis for a system with self-learning has been applied.

 

Those who dare to play the game, with the risk of discovering that they’re not a good trader at all, will get the chance to experiment with new ways of trading in a safe environment. At the same time, the game provides a lot of insight into how trading is done. Olaf: "For eighty percent, trading is emotion and so it is interesting to see how people deal with varying factors."

Logistic aspects could also be linked to the future digital world market system. Olaf: "Uber-type lorries can transport products much more efficiently on the basis of data from the system and therefore cover fewer empty, wasted kilometers. All techniques are available, but the challenge is to bring everything together and to align them with each other."