Provide digital solutions tailored to small and medium-sized farms to monitor and sustainably manage agricultural inputs and natural resources

In line with the common agricultural policy objectives, the European Green Deal and the headline ambitions of a digital age and economy that work for people, leaving no one behind, more specifically the zero pollution action plan for air, water and soil, the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, the Climate Law and the climate adaptation strategy, the successful proposal will improve the capacities of small- and medium-sized farms to manage agricultural inputs and natural resources through the uptake of tailored digital tools making use of data technologies, including generative AI. In that way, the proposal should encourage farming systems to prevent and reduce pollution in water, air and soil, increase the use efficiency of natural resources, reduce the impact of climate change, and empower farmers to take informed decisions on agricultural inputs and natural resources for environmental and economic sustainability, as described for this destination.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• small- and medium-sized farmers are empowered with innovative digital and data-driven solutions tailored to their specific needs, allowing for the sustainable management of water, nutrients, other inputs and natural resources in conventional and other types of agriculture, including organic farming systems;
• the digital divide between farms with differing capacities and characteristics is reduced.

A key challenge for the agricultural sector is to provide food in a context of increasing global population, climate change and price volatility while reducing pollution and preserving natural resources and biodiversity for future generations. Farmers should be able to adopt innovative solutions to increase the efficiency and competitiveness of the farming sector while lowering its environmental footprint. However, still many farmers, particularly small- and medium-sized ones, do not have easy access to monitoring and decision support systems and tools fed with data reflecting local conditions and farm characteristics.

Digital and data technologies offer solutions to monitor environmental parameters (e.g. soil conditions, water and air quality, nutrients content and availability) in a cost-efficient manner while supporting decision-making of natural resources and inputs management.

Proposals should:

• critically analyse the potential and limitations of R&I results from relevant past and ongoing projects, and the requirements of further development to meet farmers’ needs (including a cost-benefit analysis), made available to industrial partners (including SMEs) that provide technological solutions to farmers to monitor and manage natural resources and agricultural inputs. This should be in the form of a structured catalogue of these results relevant to the topic such as new sensors, software, databases, applications, methodologies, algorithms, etc. (non-exhaustive list), and covering different farming systems/approaches, including organic farming;
• identify barriers and enablers for translation of R&I results into practical and commercial tools for small- and medium-sized farmers, and for the uptake by these end-users, as well as characterise remaining knowledge, training and/or advice gaps, and needs for policy feedback;
• design and set up an accessible and searchable web-based database with technical descriptions and relevant information of all the available results from the catalogue in a structured way, making concrete efforts to follow the FAIR principles;
• set up a central brokerage and support service point aimed at matching innovation ideas from industrial partners that want to improve or create new products or services with the needs of small- and medium-sized farmers. These developments include, for example, increasing the number of measured parameters on existing devices, improving precision, automation, integration of systems and decision-making tools considering the diverse pedo-climatic, cropping and social conditions across the EU and Associated Countries while checking also the transferability to other regions with similar characteristics. The service should be free of charge for the industrial partners;
• establish a network of research and innovation providers and intermediaries with capacity to support the industrial partners to identify and develop the newly adapted solutions;
• provide innovations based on digital and data-based solutions (e.g. IoT, remote sensing, sensors, (generative) artificial intelligence, data visualization techniques) and tailored to the needs of small- and medium-sized farmers, carefully considering the specific barriers and enablers for adoption in each context (e.g. skills of end users, access to and understanding of digital tools, availability of local data, investment need, connectivity, gender role perceptions and expectations, diverse pedo-climatic and socio-economic conditions across the EU and Associated Countries, etc.) and proposing how to overcome these difficulties and foster the enablers;
• develop prototypes of the innovations and test them in an operational environment;
• set up a community of practice to facilitate science-business exchanges and to share experiences across the EU and Associated Countries. Complementarities with European and national AKIS knowledge channels or similar should be explored;
• propose a clear strategy to disseminate and exploit results, innovations and best practices during and beyond the project lifetime;
• monitor progress of the different innovations delivered by the supported third parties, taking stock of good practices and contribution to the achievement of the objectives of the topic.

Proposals should implement the multi-actor approach, involving at least scientists, private companies, innovators, advisors and farmers to ensure a functional and effective product which is tailored to the farmers’ needs.

Proposals should provide financial support to third parties to help private partners to develop those innovative products primarily building on the technologies identified in the catalogue. It is expected that minimum 50% and maximum 65% of the EU funding should be allocated to this purpose. Consortia need to define a selection process for the industrial partners for which financial support may be granted. The provision of training (including technical guidelines and ad-hoc materials) and support services to farmers and advisers should be considered as a criterion to grant financial support to these third parties.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines, especially in the field of behavioural sciences and adoption of technologies.