This year the conference DCLivingLab took place at 19 - 21 April in which students with different cultural backgrounds, education, and countries are put together in one project team to come up with creative solutions for nowadays societal problems in different industries. Co-creation is crucial in this project.

The students including me were working three days in a row together with a variety of experts from the industry. In those three days, we have done a number of brainstorm sessions, creative sessions, and environments in order to eventually come up with the right solution for the problem in the Agro-food sector.

The problem in the Agro-food industry in the Netherlands: ‘There is a solid system created which is there for almost 70 years. Dutch farmers are good in cost leadership which means that they are able to produce effectively. Therefore, they could set a sharp price on the market. However, the farmers are not making much profit.’ Hence, we were asked to come up with a solution for the farmers.

Thus, we did some research and found our main input for the project, namely in 2012 between 1.7 and 2.6 billion kilos of food was wasted in the Netherlands. Personally, we thought that this was too much and started thinking of a solution. Therefore, we came up with a food waste market with a slogan, ‘Sharing smiles – The game changer of life’. In this experience the farmer is using his ‘ugly’ food which is normally seen as waste, to give workshops on, for instance how to combine a number of vegetables or making music with the expired food. The visitors, in this case, are paying a small fee for the workshops, music and other entertainment places at the market. In this case, the farmer is making more money and the visitors receive a different experience while going to the market. To conclude those three days, we presented our solution to the Reverse Mission delegation.