For years, nutrient use efficiency has been treated largely as an on-farm question.
How much nutrient is applied? How much is taken up by the crop? How much is lost to air, water, or soil? Those remain essential questions. But they are no longer enough.
A broader challenge is coming into focus across agriculture and food systems: how can nutrient use efficiency be understood not only at the point of application, but across the full journey from fertilizer production and farm management through food processing, distribution, consumption, and waste?
That question sits at the heart of the IFA Nutrient Use Efficiency Tracking Hackathon, which will take place in June during the IFAMA World Conference with an online participation option for those joining remotely. The event is organized by the IFA Innovation Hub and powered by Wageningen University & Research and FarmHack.
The Hackathon is built around a simple but important idea: agriculture may produce enough food globally, but the nutrient story across the food system remains fragmented. Data on fertilizer production, nutrient application, crop uptake, food processing, retail pathways, and nutrition outcomes often sit in different systems, owned by different actors, and measured in different ways.
At the same time, consumers are asking tougher questions about sustainability and nutrition, while farmers and the wider value chain still lack clear incentives and practical tools to optimize nutrient use efficiency at a system level.
That makes this more than a technical puzzle. It is becoming a strategic challenge for both the fertilizer sector and the broader agri-food industry.
By design, the Hackathon is a pre-competitive, open-innovation event. It does not address commercial matters, and the outputs are intended as exploratory concepts to inform public discussion. Individual organizations make their own decisions, and IFA does not influence industry standards or commercial commitments.
Why nutrient tracking matters now
Improved nutrient use efficiency is often discussed in terms of agronomic and environmental performance, and rightly so. Better nutrient management can help reduce losses and related environmental and climate impacts. But the opportunity is wider than that.
A more connected understanding of nutrients through the value chain could also help improve nutritional outcomes, enable downstream actors to differentiate sustainably produced food, recognize efficient farming practices, and unlock new data-driven insights across the food system. In other words, better tracking is not just about compliance or measurement. It could become an enabler of better-informed decisions and innovation.
This is one reason the topic is drawing interest across multiple communities at once. Agronomists, food companies, sustainability leaders, data scientists, start-ups, and digital traceability experts all have something to contribute. The challenge is inherently interdisciplinary, and that is precisely why a hackathon format makes sense.
Four challenge areas, one connected system
Participants in the IFA Hackathon will work in teams on four targeted challenge areas.
The first focuses on on-farm nutrient application data gaps, including how to improve the accuracy and consistency of nutrient application data and how to create lower-cost approaches for real-time or near-real-time reporting.
The second looks at tracking nutrient losses and transformations, including visibility across the nutrient lifecycle, from manufacturing inputs through crop uptake to end use, focusing on agronomic and environmental flows rather than commercially sensitive production data, and identifying where losses occur and how they might be quantified.
The third challenge moves beyond the farm gate to consumer and post-farmgate nutrient pathways, exploring how nutrients move through processing, retail, households, and waste streams.
The fourth examines integration with existing digital traceability ecosystems, asking how nutrient information might be layered into systems already used for food safety, carbon tracking, and logistics.
These themes matter because they reflect a real-world transition now underway. Nutrient stewardship is no longer solely a production issue. It is becoming part of a wider conversation about transparency, resilience, sustainability, and value creation across food systems.
A space for practical experimentation
One of the more compelling aspects of the event is that it is not limited to a single solution. The outcomes could range from coding-heavy tools and hardware concepts to visualizations, system maps, mixed-method approaches, and ideas that combine environmental, social, and stakeholder dimensions.
That openness matters. Some of the most useful innovations in agri-food do not begin solely as fully built software products. They begin as better ways to frame a problem, link disconnected actors, or make a hidden pattern visible. A good hackathon can accelerate that early-stage discovery by bringing together people who would not normally work in the same room.
The event will include challenge briefings, team formation, data support, dedicated hacking time, final pitching, jury review, and an award ceremony. The structure is designed not just for idea generation, but for turning insight into tangible products.
Who should consider taking part?
The target audience is deliberately broad, and the event is open to all interested participants. Organizers are seeking motivated, creative team players, including domain experts in nutrient science, agriculture, and food systems; data and IT specialists such as AI and machine learning practitioners, developers, data scientists, and UX or UI designers; business thinkers and innovators; students and young professionals; and others interested in solving practical industry problems. Participants sign up individually and form teams of roughly five to eight people during the event.
That interdisciplinary model is one of the strongest reasons to join. Many industry problems remain stuck not because of a lack of intelligence, but because expertise is siloed. Nutrient specialists may understand the science but not the digital architecture.
Developers may see opportunities in data infrastructure but not the agronomic reality. Food system experts may understand downstream dynamics but not how upstream nutrient decisions are made. A setting that combines those viewpoints can create faster, more practical progress.
More than a standalone event
The location also adds to the proposition. The Hackathon is being hosted during the IFAMA World Conference 2026, giving participants access to a wider international agri-food setting that brings together business, academic, policy, and industry stakeholders. The participant materials highlight the opportunity to engage with conference attendees, gain exposure to industry leaders, and expand a global network.
For early-career professionals, that may offer an unusually strong combination: a hands-on collaborative challenge with mentoring and coaching, alongside proximity to senior decision-makers and cross-sector conversations. For established professionals, it offers a chance to test ideas quickly, meet unconventional collaborators, and explore an emerging innovation area before it becomes crowded.
Why this challenge is worth attention
The most interesting innovation spaces are often the ones that sit between established sectors. Nutrient use efficiency tracking from plant to plate is one of those spaces. It cuts across fertilizer, farming, food, data, sustainability, and consumer transparency. It has implications for productivity, environmental outcomes, nutrition, and market design. And it is still open enough that participants have room to shape what comes next.
That makes the IFA Hackathon more than a competition. It is a live working session around a question that is likely to matter much more in the coming years: how can food systems better understand where nutrients go, where value is created, and where losses can be reduced?
For people who enjoy building, testing, challenging assumptions, and working across disciplines, this is the kind of problem that rewards participation.
Registration is open here; IFA Hackathon for those who wish to take part either in-person or online.
Author: Jack Keeys, IFA International Innovation Lead