A VitiGEOSS project video was displayed during the session “Permanent crops” held within the European Innovation Partnershop (EIP-AGRI) workshop “Farm data for better farm performance”, celebrated in an online format on Thursday 9th of December. The video shown offered a general overview about VitiGEOSS, its consortium, the platform to be developed, as well as the three project’s pilots and the expected impacts.
The EIP-AGRI workshop had the objective to take stock of on-going successful projects and initatives that collect and use farm generated data to improve farm performance, explore the role of different stakeholders on farm data collection and provide an environment to exchange best practices on farm data collection, use and sharing.
In addition Josep Pijuan, project partner and researcher at the Applied Artificial Intelligence Unit of Eurecat, moderated the workshop “How to involve small-medium farmers in data economies?”, aiming at discussing and identifying the current barriers farmers are facing and proposing solutions for them. At the end of the workshop 4 main conclusions were higlighted:
- Fear to share data is a general problem in several EU countries, definitely not just for small-scale farmers. This may be tackled by proper education on data systems, basic knowledge on technologies, trustfulness and security, and how they work
- Different legal frameworks in different countries, as well as other inputs and language barriers, should be faced by interoperable and easy to use solutions
- Precision farming may not be required for small-scale farmers, but better farming using data would be useful for them.
- Access to trustful advisors, advisory systems and investments in new machines or technologies is relatively more difficult and expensive for small farmers, while they may need more detailed data. Solutions could include cooperative approaches to buy/use technology together with other farmers
Download the poster distributed during the event here
The EIP-AGRI is working to contribute to the European Union’s strategy “Europe 2020” for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, and ensuring a steady supply of food, feed and biomaterials, developing its work in harmony with the essential natural resources on which farming depends.