TRADE AND MARKET I NG Sustainability as central theme at SIA In the McDonald’s stand everything is about sustainability, explain Laurent Pouchelle, Mark Jansen and Dirk Peters (from left to right). This spring, agriculture was once again the theme in Paris. The Salon International l’Agriculture (SIA) once again moved into the enormous halls of the exhibition complex in Porte de Versailles. A total of 672,568 visitors viewed, tasted and were informed about all the delicious and sustainably-produced products that French agriculture has to offer. Naturally, the potato was also featured here. T here is a cheerful atmosphere in the busy McDonald stand, for McCain is celebrating that the company has been supplying French fries to the fast food chain for thirty years. ‘This also means that we’ve been working with our growers for thirty years’, says account manager Laurent Pouchelle. ‘We’ve often been working with different generations of growers already’ , he says. At present, McCain grows about 4,000 hectares of potatoes in France for the chain, all of which are of the Innovator variety, Pouchelle works out. He tells us that a lot has changed in the past thirty years. ‘We’re currently working together with McDonald’s on an agro-ecological strategy. An important goal is that we want less input into the environment’, he says. In order to be able to grow potatoes responsibly, the fast food chain is working together with various startups and other organisations. Through the ‘Agric Challenge’ competition, the chain approached fifty start-ups in the agri environment to develop innovative products or services to make cultivation more sustainable. McDonald’s has selected three companies to test their idea in practice. As an example Pouchelle mentions the technology whereby a camera and software analyse the leaf of a plant. This makes it possible to indicate at an early stage whether a plant has a disease or not. ‘We can now see if a leaf is diseased, even before the human eye can.’ The grower can easily mount this technology on his tracPotato World 2018 • number 3 21 Pagina 24
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