Democratising digital farming through tailored open source and open hardware solutions

ongoing

The last decade has seen an explosion of interest and investment in the use of Agricultural Digital Technologies (ADSs). The use of ADSs is seen by many as an opportunity to increase the economic and environmental performance of the agricultural sector. Despite great efforts and resources spent, uptake of ADSs by EU farmers has been limited for reasons like a) the frequently excessive cost of ADSs, b) the low trust that farmers have on ADSs and data sharing, for a variety reasons, and c) the weak network connectivity problems experienced by farms in remote areas, which affect the performance of the ADS. The overall aim of the OpenAgri project is to democratise digital farming by enabling the development and deployment of innovative cost-effective energy-efficient OS software and open hardware-based ADSs that can operate at a high performance even in remote areas with weak connectivity. This will be achieved by a) ensuring the co-creation of ADSs by engaging farmers and farm advisors in participatory prototyping activities inspired by the makerspaces approach; and b) providing access to a number of reusable OS software services designed to support the edge and mixed computing mode, and a “sociotechnical infrastructure”. Using a multi-actor approach, OpenAgri will involve farmers, ADSs providers, farm advisors and scientists in 14 Sustainable Innovation Pilots (SIPs) in ≥10 countries across Europe, and guide them in co-creating and piloting edge, cloud and mixed-model ADSs addressing important challenges of agricultural production. 5 SIPs have been pre-selected and 9 more will be awarded through an Open Call, enabling a dynamic response to a changing policy and technology landscape. Finally, building on a thorough analysis of EU agriculture and the results from the SIPs, OpenAgri will create a Decision Support Tool that will allow Policy Makers, Farmers and Farm Advisors to select the best possible cloud, edge or mixed ADSs for any given set of conditions.