Paul van Zoggel

It is 2006 : The 35 KM Diet Foundation started. Is surviving in a 35 kilometer region possible? Can we turn this into a game? Can we make the doorstep of a farmer as low as the supermarket doorstep?

We managed to go for a database of farm products on a google map. Smart phones didn’t exist. The energy for maintenance was higher than needs solved. We did PolderHack with government data and VDBorne FarmHack, Wat Groeit Hier, Hallo Boer, Croptimize. All cool stuff but of course we were way ahead of time… 

It is 2016. In the middle of my role as senior consultant geographic data and developing FoodGame2040 an opportunity arrived. To help develop the Precision Agriculture Fieldlab in Brabant the Test and Innovation Center. And so I did. Farm of the Future Sandy Soils, Agri Drone Port, Smarter Farming Platform and Smart Farming Academy, Smart Rural Region. 

It is 2026. 20 years went fast. And I got a notification my domain name paulvanzoggel.com was expired. I rambled on LinkedIn but I didn’t write for 10 years a blogpost. My last post was reason to write, if you have so much in your head you cannot function anymore. I think I am due. Have to get it out so in 10 or 20 years I can move on. 

What will 2036 be? I know we will celebrate 500 years of innovation, with all the good and bad sides for humanity. In 2026 we decided to move on. Investment cycles are 10 years. Investing now to make a living means optimising processes. Investing in 10 years from now means we have 10 years the chance to create a transformative investment opportunity. Let’s go for that!

The HAS Hogeschool Minor Work on Worldfood Dialogue 2016 was amazing. In the beginning off 2017 we had a followup team students diving deeper into the future off City Region Oss on their possible role in vegetable, diary, meat and animalfood chains off 2040.

Other students from different schools will keep on building on FoodGame Brabant with the goal to get a grip on the future off food wishes and reality, getting closer to a circular economy and understanding a possible 10.000 jobs in 2040.

As it is a “World” Food Dialogue; How are we going to connect FoodGame Oss, FoodGame Brabant to the Global Food Game Dialogue and Actions ?

#SDG12 and #SDG17 are mostly likely to be further investigated first.
– A transparent supplychain economy with feedback loops in the region through best practice #SDG12.
– Partnering up with (possible) players in the foreseen vegetable and livestock chains including #hyperloop logisitcs and #soja plantations with #SDG17

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Watching Thomas Friedman powerful talk at MIT on his adventure discovering the world became flat while we were sleeping…

The phrase still arousing me, Thomas whispering in the microphone; “… and nobody told the kids“. (That the economic playing field is levelled and we better get used to it fast.)  So…Who is currently telling the kids about The REAL World?

Here a throw : Kids, reality is, factories took over routine physical labor, computers routine mental labor and many of our jobs are global. Many of todays jobs won’t be around by the time you turn 20 or so. The messenger has hope for you; There will always be jobs, everybody has the tools to work and the regions with most imagination will flourish.

So the duties to fulfil; Regions give access to tools and help the next generation (AO) to be imaginative. Check.

It is early, like 4 a.m. in the morning, my iphone 8 wakes me up.

It’s Pete, the mini-me I send on a quest the other day to find the purpose of my life.

“I found it!” he says with a rotten voice as if my digital assistent was in a bar all night.  “The best thing for you, Paul, to do next in life is go to the countryside 25 miles out of the city and start a little farm!”.

Pete his calculations are emotionless logic. Hard-hard facts, numbers are crunched on my potential, potential on all the people in the region and the potential of the region related to the planet. How cool is that?

“With all the logic in the world you come up with that?” I reply. Now I get into a virtual verbal barfight with grumpy Smurf, it seems I ruined his day…

I wonder if this will be the case. (Smurfs on phones outsmarting us). Yet, wouldn’t it be great some things surrounding us would start to make sense again?  Some primary logic which makes us, our surrounding, the world tick? An App telling us what the next best (individual) step is to go collaboratively for a ‘better picture’?

Looking at the massive succes of The Smurfs village App.. who knows …