In-person meeting of the Future Agriculture Cohort 2025 in Boulder

From 19 to 23 May 2025, the Future Agriculture Cohort 2025 held its second in-person meeting in Boulder, Colorado (USA). The focus was on transatlantic dialogue around land-use conflicts between agriculture and renewable energy. The goal was to jointly develop policy recommendations that support both food security and energy supply.

Participants visited farms, research institutions and energy projects – including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), an ethanol production facility, and Jack’s Solar Garden, a flagship agrivoltaics project. In discussions with political and administrative representatives – including the Governor of Colorado and the State Secretary for Agriculture – regional challenges and potential solutions were explored.

Representing the DLG Competence Centre for Agriculture, Lukas Mißlbeck, manager of the IPZ farm, and Jonas Trippner from the Frankfurt office contributed insights from German agriculture and actively participated in drafting the joint recommendations, which were published in the document Policy Recommendations – Forum Future Agriculture 2025 (digital).

The project included a total of eleven online workshops and two in-person meetings in Magdeburg and Boulder, and is set to continue with a third round.

On-site visit at the IPZ

On 2 April 2025, a visit to the International DLG Crop Production Center (IPZ) in Bernburg took place. The day began with a tour of the agrivoltaics trial plots operated by Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. Afterwards, Siv Biada, head of the IPZ, presented the centre’s responsibilities and research activities.

This was followed by a guided tour of various trial plots, including the irrigation trial of the TRANSFORM project and the IWANA trial. The day concluded with a visit to a wind farm operated by Lukas Mißlbeck, who manages the IPZ farmland.