Final Report Summary - ICT-AGRI 2 (Information and Communication Technologies and Robotics for Sustainable Agriculture)
Executive Summary:
The present project, ICT-AGRI-2 (2014-18), is a follow-up on ICT-AGRI (2009-2015). The two ERA-NET projects have thus been active in a decade from 2009 to 2018. During this decade, digitisation in a broad sense has changed business and social life radically. Today, precision farming is a reality, satellite data has become freely available and robotics are fuelled by cheap and powerful sensors and artificial intelligence (AI). Today probably no other intervention is spreading through all aspects of agriculture as massively as digitisation. During this process, ICT-AGRI ERA-NET has been involved directly or indirectly in many of the major initiatives at a European level e.g. EIP-AGRI, Smart AKIS, FI cPPP (Future Internet Public Private Partnership). Since FP7, substantial more budget has been allocated to the precision farming and digitisation in Horizon 2020 and many partners of ICT-AGRI ERA-NET projects have been able to be involved in large Horizon 2020 projects.
Although the effects on agriculture and food systems probably have been less disruptive as on many other business areas, digitisation is also changing production, distribution and consumption of food. The underlying rationale for ICT-AGRI was that digitisation is necessary for meeting the grand challenges in food systems. By the end of the decade this is now also the rationale underlying food policy-making in Europe on the national as well as the EU level. It would be an exaggeration to claim this as an impact of ICT-AGRI, but it is realistic to claim that ICT-AGRI has contributed to this change of views.
ICT-AGRI has produced two major publications on this subject. A Strategic Research Agenda in 2012 and a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda in 2018. The latter takes the immense growth of digital technologies into account and it broadens the agenda encompassing the complete food system. Both publications have been developed in a close and dedicated dialogue with researchers, ICT-developers as well as SMEs, large industries and policy-makers on national and European levels.
ICT-AGRI has launched five calls for trans-national projects based on contributions from funders among the ICT-AGRI partners. Thirty-eight projects have received support. An impact assessment made by ICT-AGRI-2 has provided evidence for the fact that many of these projects would not have been possible without ICT-AGRI funding. The projects have involved about 200 researchers and developers throughout Europe. For many of these the ICT-AGRI project would have been a first experience in international collaboration, leading to increased participation in European projects. A recent more informal assessment based on Internet search reveals that several ICT-AGRI funded projects have been able to exploit their results in agricultural ICT start-up companies.
ICT-AGRI has been heavily engaged in networking with the wider R&D community to an extent that is unusual for an ERA-NET. This was facilitated by participation in and contributions to most national and European events with relation to ICT and robotics in agriculture. Furthermore, at major conferences including EFITA, EurAgEng, Manufuture, SmartAgriFood, CAPIGA and ECPA as well as several events arranged by the European Commission presentations have been provided and workshops been organised. Networking has also been facilitated via the ICT-AGRI website, including online consultations and partner searches connected to calls.
ICT-AGRI-2 has successfully organised two larger events, the ICT-AGRI Seminar in Dublin in February 2016 and the ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen in November 2017. The ICT-AGRI Conference was very successful with presentations from large industry and small ICT companies as well as researchers and funders on national and European levels. The conference attracted 100 participants and it was broadcasted live to spectators throughout the world.
ICT-AGRI has produced a number of publications. Publications produced by ICT-AGRI partners can be found as submitted deliverables, and articles produced by ICT-AGRI funded projects can be found on the ICT-AGRI website.
The extensive engagement with all kinds of stakeholders was made possible by dedicated people in all ICT-AGRI partner organisations. A further advantage was that a large part of the budget could be allocated to interaction with stakeholders due to a reasonable informal management style and utilisation of online management tools implemented in the ICT-AGRI Meta Knowledge Base (MKB). The MKB was used in the mapping of projects related to ICT and robotics in agriculture.
Project Context and Objectives:
The ERA-NET ICT-AGRI-2 targets Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and robotics for sustainable agriculture. The underlying rationale of the project is that modern agricultural engineering tools are necessary to enable agriculture to meet the global demand for food, feed and bio-based products, to reduce the environmental and climate footprint of agriculture, to respond to customer demands for healthy food and to combine precision livestock farming with high animal welfare standards. This leads to the principal objective for ICT-AGRI-2: To contribute to the development of an eco-efficient, resource-efficient and competitive agriculture through an enhanced and improved use of ICT and robotics.
ICT-AGRI-2 pursues this objective within the framework of related European initiatives including Horizon 2020, European Innovation Partnership ‘Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable’, Common Agricultural Policy, Technological Platforms, Public-Private Partnerships, Joint Programming Initiatives (especially FACCE-JPI) and other ERA-NETs.).
Equally important is the outreach to the public and private stakeholders engaged in ICT and robotics in agriculture: Research and innovation funding agencies, research and development organisations and enterprises, advisory and extension services and other providers of ICT to farmers, public services in environmental and agricultural administration, SMEs in rural areas, farmers, food chains, agricultural supply chains and consumers. The use of ICT and robotics in internal farm operations and in external farm business relations is growing fast, and compatible systems are becoming increasingly critical for achieving the full potential of the technology.
The ICT-AGRI-2 project has been based on the previous ERA-NET ICT-AGRI (Co-ordination of ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and Related Environmental Issues). A significant achievement of the first ICT-AGRI was the Strategic Research Agenda published in December 2012. The SRA identified research and innovation requirements for ICT and robotics in agriculture and provided recommendations for the implementation of the SRA. Similar recommendations appear in the Strategic Research Agenda from the FP7 project agriXchange. A major goal for ICT-AGRI-2 was to facilitate the implementation of the SRA through appropriately structured mapping and analysis of ongoing research and innovation followed by application of transnational joint calls and other coordination actions on topics of mutual interests. ICT-AGRI-2 has maintained, through mapping and consultation, extensive relations with stakeholders representing the complete chain from research to application. ICT-AGRI-2 has promoted transnational collaboration and critical mass by inviting national research and innovation programmes (including public-private partnerships) to participate in joint calls. ICT-AGRI has mobilised expertise from SMEs through network activities. ICT-AGRI-2 has collaborated with other ERA-NETs (Core Organic, C-IPM, ERA-GAS and SusAn and JPI-FACCE in order to share good practise and, where appropriate, conduct joint calls. ICT-AGRI2 has also worked together with the H2020 project e-ROSA in developing an e-infrastructure roadmap for open science in agriculture and food science.
In the pursuit of the principal objective of ICT-AGRI-2, to contribute to the development of an eco-efficient and competitive agriculture through an enhanced and improved use of ICT and robotics, six objectives with direct relation to the proposed work in the ICT-AGRI-2 were specified:
1. Transnational joint calls for coordinated research and innovation
2. Coordination within the European Research Area
3. Dissemination, online tools and sharing of good practices
4. Assessment of impacts of ERA-NET activities
5. Mapping and analysis of research and innovation and update of the Strategic Research Agenda
6. Efficient project management
Project Results:
Calls for coordinated research and innovation
The first call by ICT-AGRI-2 was run in 2015, one year after the start of ICT-AGRI-2 and shortly after the third call by ICT-AGRI-1 (together with SmartAgriFood). The title of the call was “Enabling Precision Farming” and the call text underlined the intention of the call to support projects, which would support the application of Precision Farming on farms and the uptake of Precision Farming by farmers. Twelve funding agencies contributed to the call with a total commitment of 5.66 m€.
The implementation of the call utilised a number of dedicated tools in the ICT-AGRI website for
· informing applicants about the call
· partner search and match making
· preparation and submission of proposals
· evaluation of eligibility by the funding agencies
· evaluation and ranking by experts
· selection by the funding agencies
The implementation performed efficiently and cost-effective for the applicants as well as the funding agencies.
The call attracted 19 valid pre-proposals and 17 full proposals, and resulted in 8 funded projects which means a success rate for the researchers of almost 50%. Two of the funded projects were created by amalgamating, in each case, two original proposals. This was based on recommendations from the expert panel. The funding agencies found that this amalgamation improved the quality of the projects as well as the utilisation of available funding.
Out of the total commitment, 1.6 m€ (28%) could not be used to fund projects. These were the commitments from Belgium, Latvia and Spain. The commitments from Belgium and Spain were intended for local SMEs and the failure in using these commitments gave rise to a discussion at the Governing Board meeting in October 2015. A possible reason to the failure could be the long and rather complicated two-step procedure of the call, which may not be attractive for SMEs. This issue was discussed at the ICT-AGRI-2 Governing Board meeting in October 2016.
ICT-AGRI Partnerships
The 2nd ICT-AGRI Call scheduled for 2016 was implemented by a novel model due to insufficient commitments from Funding Agencies to a normal virtual common pot call. As a replacement the ERA-NET had developed a novel concept named ICT-AGRI Partnerships. ICT-AGRI Partnerships concept is based on funding from national or regional Funding Agencies. The main difference is that the partners in a partnership are required to secure the funding individually from existing grants or from applications for new grants. A further option is to use own funding. The Funding Agencies are required to approve the use of their grants in an ICT-AGRI Partnership.
The advantages of the partnerships models are
· The partnerships model is well suited to support the implementation of agricultural research in ICT tools through a collaboration among agricultural researchers and ICT developers.
· The evaluation and approval procedures are simpler and faster, in particular when the partnership is based on existing grants.
· The partnerships may be more attractive for SMEs because of the simpler and faster procedure and less restrictive conditions on number of partners.
· The geographic basis is wider as there are no restrictions on countries.
The drawbacks of the partnerships model are
· The absence of funding dedicated to the specific area of ICT and Robotics in agriculture. An important incentive for potential applicants is thereby missing.
· It may be difficult for Funding Agencies to commit funding dedicated to transnational projects because the normal ERA-NET driven competitive selection is absent.
Funding Agencies not related to ICT-AGRI may find it more attractive to join ICT-AGRI Partnerships because they are not required to commit funding beforehand and they can apply their own funding regulations and selection procedures. National and regional as well as EU investments in ICT robotics related projects are increasing, and the needs for European/international collaboration and alignment are likewise increasing. The ICT-AGRI Partnerships is a possible instrument for collaboration and alignment. The incentives for researchers and companies to join partnerships are most likely to arise from Funding Agencies, who see this as a means for achieving most value for the investments.
The partnership call was integrated into the ICT-AGRI website and the call was launched in January 2016 with information on the website and in a newsletter to all registered users on the website. Partnering and submission tools were available in the website similarly to the first ICT-AGRI-2 Call in 2015, with the modifications required by a different call model.
Unfortunately, the call gained very little interest from funders as well as from applicants.
The third call by ICT-AGRI-2 was run in 2017.
The title of the call was “Farm Management Systems for Precision Farming” and the call text underlined the intention of the call to support projects, which will support the application of Precision Farming on farms and the uptake of Precision Farming by farmers by development of Farm Management Systems. Fifteen funding agencies contributed to the call with a total commitment of 5.28 m€. Among these were Argentina and New Zealand achieved by careful networking by ICT-AGRI partners concerning international collaboration.
For the implementation of the call the dedicated tools on the ICT-AGRI website were used again. The implementation performed efficiently and cost-effective for the applicants as well as the funding agencies.
The call attracted 13 valid full proposals, and resulted in 6 funded projects. Three of the projects were requested to make changes in the consortium due to lack of funding from the funding agencies. This was based on recommendations from the expert panel.
Out of the total commitment, 2.5 m€ (48%) could not be used to fund projects. The Dutch funding agency did not attract any applications, presumably due to rather strict rules concerning post-doc applicants, which were difficult to combine with near-market projects. The Irish funding agency did also not attract applications. The New Zealand funding agency received one application, but this was considered outside the scope of NZ funding as published in the call document. In addition, several proposals could not be funded due to lack of funding from one or two countries represented in the consortia.
In comparison with the first ICT-AGRI-2 call in 2015, this call attracted considerable more interest from private enterprises (SMEs), while the interest from academia was less than in 2015 and also less than in the ICT-AGRI-1 calls. It seems to be difficult to combine funding targeted at research with funding targeted at business development in trans-national calls.
A further call was launched in 2018 in collaboration with the SusAn and ERA-GAS ERA-NETS. It provided an opportunity for combining a number of different agricultural and environmental issues with ICT, for enabling a more Food System perspective to evolve. ICT-AGRI manages the call via the tools in the Meta Knowledge Base implemented in the ICT-AGRI website. SusAn and ERAGAS decided the agricultural topics in the call. ICT-AGRI added the topic about digitisation enabling the solution of the agricultural issues.
Coordination within the European Research Area
The ICT-AGRI ERA-NET was strongly committed to the principles of researcher career progression and researcher mobility in line with the objectives of the European Research Area. In line with this, applications were required to demonstrate a career development plan for all non-permanent researchers recruited to the prospective projects.
Facilitation of networking activities was an important task in the ICT-AGRI-2.
The goal was ‘to connect people working in the context of ICT-AGRI-2 in physical and social ways to be able to contribute to mutual learning, future collaboration and a reduction in duplication of activities.’
A first level of networking was amongst the ICT-AGRI partners. This took place during the regular Governing Board Meetings by dedicated learning and development sessions and with respect to social ways whenever ICT-AGRI-2 partners met.
A second level of networking was between ICT-AGRI-2 and the wider R&D community. This was facilitated by participation in and contributions to most national and European events with relation to ICT and robotics in agriculture and, furthermore, by providing presentations and organising workshops at major conferences including EFITA, EurAgEng, Manufuture, SmartAgriFood, CAPIGA and ECPA as well as several events arranged by the European Commission. Finally, by ICT-AGRI-2 conduction of larger events, such as the ICT-AGRI Seminar in Dublin (February 2016) and the ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen (November 2017). Especially the ICT-AGRI Conference was very successful with presentations from large industry and small ICT companies as well as researchers and funders on national and European levels. ICT-AGRI has at all occasions met a genuine interest from on all levels.
A third level of networking was amongst ICT-AGRI funded researchers on three occasions, Dublin February 2016, Copenhagen 2017 and Dublin November 2018. The common goal of these summits was to encourage mutual learning and future collaborations by bringing people together from ICT-AGRI funded projects. The responses from the researchers were very good as substantiated by representatives from 20 projects in 2016, 13 projects in 2017 and 17 projects in 2018. Lively discussions witnessed mutual interest in each other’s projects.
ICT-AGRI-2 has established a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) regarding support to the ”Organic Best Practices & Ecosystem Preservation Kick-Start Activity” offering support and funding to companies looking to develop space empowered services for the preservation of our environment. The ICT-AGRI-2 support to the Call with Opening date: 07 March 2018 and Closing date: 19 April 2018, was meant to inform the ICT-AGRI-2 constituency and ecosystem, 35 project coordinators all-in-all, about the call itself along with leaflets and information material advertising the call on the ICT-AGRI-2 website.
Dissemination, online tools and sharing of good practices
During ICT-AGRI it became clear that online tools were indispensable to perform the different tasks within the ERA-NET efficiently. Therefore, the Meta Knowledge Base (MKB) was developed as a central internet-based resource for multiple purposes. Initially the MKB was designed only for mapping purposes but it soon became the core instrument of the project. This tool proved to be very well suited to support all activities of the project, including:
- Search facilities for identifying organisations, professionals and ongoing projects
- Online consultation with stakeholders during the elaboration the Strategic Research Agenda
- Electronic submission system for ICT-AGRI transnational calls, which in combination with the search facilities proved very efficient for establishing new consortia
- Administration system for online handling of ICT-AGRI calls by the funding agencies, which provided a very cost-efficient administration of the transnational calls
- Online monitoring of ICT-AGRI funded projects
- Project website for dissemination of information about ICT-AGRI and results from ICT-AGRI
- Facilities for electronic submission of newsletters to registered users and subscribers
- Closed area for internal project administration and communication, including calendar, meeting preparation, task inventory, mailing lists, and document archive.
The MKB was enriched with new facilities in ICT-AGRI-2, including a number of tools in the closed management area for online communication and sharing of documents as well as a system for interactive project reporting. This system allowed ICT-AGRI funded projects to upload reports and documents to the public area of the website. The system also allowed projects to create a one-page project report in a standardised format. These reports are available in the website for a quick overview of the outcomes of projects. These reports also made it possible to decorate the walls in the conference room for the Copenhagen ICT-AGRI conference with posters describing 38 ICT-AGRI funded projects.
A major development was a mapping of recent projects related to ICT and robotics in agriculture. The mapping of had a double purpose, firstly to achieve an overview of current efforts in this domain, and secondly to mimic an Open Access resource of funded projects.
The mapping of projects is available for the public on the ICT-AGRI website. There are quite advanced search tools available for identifying projects within a specific sub-domain and the results of a search can be bookmarked for later personal or public use. The coordinators of the projects can be contacted by email (via a form on the website without displaying email addresses). There are two search methods implemented for searching mapped projects:
1. A simple search by one or more keywords. Words in title or summary must match a keyword exactly.
2. An advanced search with search profiles, which can contain several weighted keywords. Here keywords need only match a part of words in title or summary. Hits are sorted and limited by a score calculated as the sum of matching keywords. A search can be limited by minimum project end year and by minimum total budget.
Website users can bookmark projects by a collection tool. This is an easy way to store interesting projects for later use.
Five hundred projects were mapped. Some were mapped by imports directly from online repositories, e.g. Cordis and some SmartAgriFood websites. Most projects were entered manually by ICT-AGRI-2 with content taken from online sources.
Based on the interest by users of the ICT-AGRI website, it was concluded that data from early stages of R&D projects is a valuable source of information for planning of calls and development of collaboration. Implementation could be done by automated harvesting of data from national and international funding organisations.
Assessment of impacts of ERA-NET activities
The purpose of the assessment was to gain insight into prior or existing initiatives, to enable reflection on the achievements and assist in the identification of potential improvements.
The assessment was based on a comprehensive questionnaire directed to project partners in ICT-AGRI funded projects. In order to take the whole process of the ICT-AGRI projects into account, the questionnaire was structured according to five main stages: (1) call process, (2) inputs, (3) outputs, (4) outcomes and (5) impacts. Theoretically, the first two stages (1-2) consider aspects that can be evaluated before or at the beginning of the projects, whereas the three others stages (3-5) consider aspects that can be measured conclusively only after the projects have been finished.
The responses to the first two stages provided valuable information concerning the call process by pointing to possible improvements and information about the inputs from the project partners.
Because projects of the Calls 2014 and 2015 were still running at the time of the survey, only researchers involved in projects funded under the framework of the Calls 2010 and 2012 were able to give a feedback on the output of their work. ICT-AGRI funding played an important role for reaching the results’ aim, as 70% of the funded projects answered that without ICT-AGRI funding, between none and only 20% of their actual results would have been achieved. The immediate outputs generally reached the expectations with, for instance, an average of 5.6 publications (peer-reviewed articles, books and conference proceedings) and 7.2 meetings with the stakeholders per project partner. Regarding intermediate outputs, a total of 13 new methods, 17 new techniques and 20 new tools were developed within 8 projects. No patent applications were generated at that time, however, a total of 22 prototypes were already created and 22% of the projects created a marketable product or service.
It was not possible to extract conclusions concerning outcomes and impacts from the questionnaire because of the too short time from the end of projects.
Mapping and analysis of research and innovation and update of the Strategic Research Agenda
The mapping in ICT-AGRI-2 was conducted by all project partners with the purpose of producing three annual action plans for the implementation of the Strategic Research Agenda. The timing of the action plans was coordinated with the development of annual transnational calls for projects and other support and coordination activities in ICT-AGRI-2. These action plans consisted of a detailed analysis of the opportunities and hindrances for further progress of the use of ICT and robotics in agriculture and concrete suggestions for research, development and innovation actions to exploit the opportunities and overcome the hindrances. The target audience for the action plans were, apart from internal use in ICT-AGRI-2, RTD and innovation bodies at the European level (e.g. European Innovation Partnerships and Horizon 2020) and at the national level (e.g. RTD funding bodies and national Public-Private Partnerships).
The three annual action plans were supported by inputs from the R&D society gained at ICT-AGRI workshops organised in conjunction with major conferences as well as regular meetings with the ICT-AGRI Advisory Committee.
The development of an updated Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) took place over two main phases with a first version delivered by the end of the original project duration in December 2017 and the final version delivered in December 2018 after ICT-AGRI-2 being extended by a year.
In the extension year, ICT-AGRI-2 produced a mapping of the digitisation of the European agri-food space in a major report, which outlined the current trends of digitisation in the agro-food system. It looked at digitisation in agro-food systems in view of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement in relation to the formulated FOOD 2030 objectives.
In the 6 years since the first ICT-AGRI SRA, the use of new technologies in agriculture has grown immensely in significance and there is widespread expectation that we are on the cusp of a “digital revolution” in the agri-food sector, which is expected to revolutionize the primary sector, dissolve the boundaries between the agriculture and food systems, create new markets for data, as well as showing the importance of creating new global policies. This SRIA aims to review the main current and future challenges for sustainable agriculture as well as the key goals. In addition, to describe the state of the ICT and robotics art and trends as well as the current and future challenges of ICT and robotics adoption in agri-food systems.
The SRIA provides a vision for ICT-enabled agri-food systems: Up until this point, the ICT-AGRI ERA-NET, and other funding in the area of precision farming, has focused on projects related to food production at the farm level. However, suppliers, processors, retailers and consumers have also a huge influence on the production systems. The potential gains that exist from the automated ICT-based collection and analysis of data and the implementation of precision technologies can only be fully realised when the whole agri-food system and its dynamics and responsiveness is dealt with as a whole. This allows for feedback and learning mechanisms, whereby preferences of consumers and processors can influence the practices of primary producers, which can in turn influence the products developed by agriculture suppliers (e.g. seed companies). It also facilitates feed-forward mechanisms where information from the farm – which gives an indication of the likely quantity, quality and composition of primary products – can influence the short- and medium-term plans of processors, thereby minimizing waste, maximizing the efficiency of the system and facilitating the production of higher value end-products.
In addition, information on the provenance of food and the emissions associated with different foodstuffs can empower consumers. Data analysis across the whole system has the potential to lead to a significant reduction in inputs and emissions that should contribute to the reduction of the environmental footprint of the sector. The barriers that prevent adoption of new technologies by producers and others in the food chain will also have to be considered. The integrated systems perspective described will assist with this by facilitating the development of entirely new business models, whereby actors in the system other than primary producers may be willing to bear (some of) the cost of new technology in exchange for the downstream benefits of its adoption. A multi-actor approach to projects implementation will also be important to ensure that developed technologies will be taken-up by actors across the agri-food system.
Efficient project management
The project management has been based on a minimum of formalized procedures and a high degree of trust in the many people involved in the ICT-AGRI partners. This has left the resources of the project to be concentrated on work on subjects within the target R&D area and on interaction with stakeholders and colleagues. It is the feeling of the project managers that this has contributed significantly to a successful project.
Potential Impact:
The ICT-AGRI and ICT-AGRI-2 projects have been active in the decade from 2009 to 2018. During this decade, digitisation in a broad sense has changed business and social life radically. Although the effects on agriculture and food systems probably have been less disruptive as on many other business areas, the new technologies have also significantly changed the views on producing, distributing and consuming food.
The underlying rationale for ICT-AGRI was that ICT is required for meeting the grand challenges in the food systems. This is now also the rationale underlying policy-making in Europe on the national as well as the EU level. It would be an exaggeration to claim this as an impact of ICT-AGRI, but it is realistic to claim that ICT-AGRI has contributed to this change of views through extensive dissemination activities.
A further impact involves the organisations and people involved as partners in the ICT-AGRI projects. The resources provided by ICT-AGRI and the determination of the people have without doubt pushed to the acceptance of the importance of ICT in the organisations.
The ICT-AGRI calls have funded 38 transnational projects. The impact assessment made by ICT-AGRI-2 provides evidence for the early calls in 2010 and 2012 have funded R&D that would not have been done without ICT-AGRI funding as well as evidence for new technologies being generated from the funded projects. The projects have involved about 200 researchers and developers throughout Europe. For many of these the ICT-AGRI project would have been a first experience in international collaboration, leading to increased participation in European projects.
The ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen in November 2017 demonstrated through presentations and posters that agricultural ICT start-ups have arisen from an ICT-AGRI funded project.
The conclusion on impacts is that ICT-AGRI has been a significant player in the developments of digitisation in agriculture during the second decade of this century.
Dissemination activities
ICT-AGRI has been heavily engaged in networking with the wider R&D community.
This was facilitated by participation in and contributions to most national and European events with relation to ICT and robotics in agriculture. Furthermore, by providing presentations and organising workshops at major conferences including EFITA, EurAgEng, Manufuture, SmartAgriFood, CAPIGA and ECPA as well as several events arranged by the European Commission.
ICT-AGRI-2 has organised larger events as the ICT-AGRI Seminar in Dublin February 2016 and the ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen November 2017. The Dublin Seminar included speakers from related Irish organisations and from several ICT-AGRI partners. The event attracted a great number of participants.
The ICT-AGRI Conference was very successful with presentations from large industry and small ICT companies as well as researchers and funders on national and European levels. The conference attracted 100 participants and it was broadcasted live to spectators throughout the world.
ICT-AGRI has produced a number of articles in popular and scientific publications. Articles produced by ICT-AGRI partners are listed elsewhere in this final report and articles produced by ICT-AGRI funded projects can be found in the ICT-AGRI website.
Exploitation of results
The ICT-AGRI-2 project consortium has 23 partners and four observer organisations covering 17 countries. The principal objective has been to contribute to the development of an eco-eficient, resource-efficient and competitive agriculture through an enhanced and improved use of ICT and robotics. ICT-AGRI-2 conducted calls in 2015, 2017 and 2018 resulting in 14 projects so far. Many of the projects resulted in practical solutions for a smart agriculture or even in start-ups. A report on the research impact was developed. The report can be found on the ICT-AGRI website.
List of Websites:
Website: www.ict-agri.eu
Coordinator: Niels Gøtke (nigoe@ufm.dk)
The present project, ICT-AGRI-2 (2014-18), is a follow-up on ICT-AGRI (2009-2015). The two ERA-NET projects have thus been active in a decade from 2009 to 2018. During this decade, digitisation in a broad sense has changed business and social life radically. Today, precision farming is a reality, satellite data has become freely available and robotics are fuelled by cheap and powerful sensors and artificial intelligence (AI). Today probably no other intervention is spreading through all aspects of agriculture as massively as digitisation. During this process, ICT-AGRI ERA-NET has been involved directly or indirectly in many of the major initiatives at a European level e.g. EIP-AGRI, Smart AKIS, FI cPPP (Future Internet Public Private Partnership). Since FP7, substantial more budget has been allocated to the precision farming and digitisation in Horizon 2020 and many partners of ICT-AGRI ERA-NET projects have been able to be involved in large Horizon 2020 projects.
Although the effects on agriculture and food systems probably have been less disruptive as on many other business areas, digitisation is also changing production, distribution and consumption of food. The underlying rationale for ICT-AGRI was that digitisation is necessary for meeting the grand challenges in food systems. By the end of the decade this is now also the rationale underlying food policy-making in Europe on the national as well as the EU level. It would be an exaggeration to claim this as an impact of ICT-AGRI, but it is realistic to claim that ICT-AGRI has contributed to this change of views.
ICT-AGRI has produced two major publications on this subject. A Strategic Research Agenda in 2012 and a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda in 2018. The latter takes the immense growth of digital technologies into account and it broadens the agenda encompassing the complete food system. Both publications have been developed in a close and dedicated dialogue with researchers, ICT-developers as well as SMEs, large industries and policy-makers on national and European levels.
ICT-AGRI has launched five calls for trans-national projects based on contributions from funders among the ICT-AGRI partners. Thirty-eight projects have received support. An impact assessment made by ICT-AGRI-2 has provided evidence for the fact that many of these projects would not have been possible without ICT-AGRI funding. The projects have involved about 200 researchers and developers throughout Europe. For many of these the ICT-AGRI project would have been a first experience in international collaboration, leading to increased participation in European projects. A recent more informal assessment based on Internet search reveals that several ICT-AGRI funded projects have been able to exploit their results in agricultural ICT start-up companies.
ICT-AGRI has been heavily engaged in networking with the wider R&D community to an extent that is unusual for an ERA-NET. This was facilitated by participation in and contributions to most national and European events with relation to ICT and robotics in agriculture. Furthermore, at major conferences including EFITA, EurAgEng, Manufuture, SmartAgriFood, CAPIGA and ECPA as well as several events arranged by the European Commission presentations have been provided and workshops been organised. Networking has also been facilitated via the ICT-AGRI website, including online consultations and partner searches connected to calls.
ICT-AGRI-2 has successfully organised two larger events, the ICT-AGRI Seminar in Dublin in February 2016 and the ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen in November 2017. The ICT-AGRI Conference was very successful with presentations from large industry and small ICT companies as well as researchers and funders on national and European levels. The conference attracted 100 participants and it was broadcasted live to spectators throughout the world.
ICT-AGRI has produced a number of publications. Publications produced by ICT-AGRI partners can be found as submitted deliverables, and articles produced by ICT-AGRI funded projects can be found on the ICT-AGRI website.
The extensive engagement with all kinds of stakeholders was made possible by dedicated people in all ICT-AGRI partner organisations. A further advantage was that a large part of the budget could be allocated to interaction with stakeholders due to a reasonable informal management style and utilisation of online management tools implemented in the ICT-AGRI Meta Knowledge Base (MKB). The MKB was used in the mapping of projects related to ICT and robotics in agriculture.
Project Context and Objectives:
The ERA-NET ICT-AGRI-2 targets Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and robotics for sustainable agriculture. The underlying rationale of the project is that modern agricultural engineering tools are necessary to enable agriculture to meet the global demand for food, feed and bio-based products, to reduce the environmental and climate footprint of agriculture, to respond to customer demands for healthy food and to combine precision livestock farming with high animal welfare standards. This leads to the principal objective for ICT-AGRI-2: To contribute to the development of an eco-efficient, resource-efficient and competitive agriculture through an enhanced and improved use of ICT and robotics.
ICT-AGRI-2 pursues this objective within the framework of related European initiatives including Horizon 2020, European Innovation Partnership ‘Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable’, Common Agricultural Policy, Technological Platforms, Public-Private Partnerships, Joint Programming Initiatives (especially FACCE-JPI) and other ERA-NETs.).
Equally important is the outreach to the public and private stakeholders engaged in ICT and robotics in agriculture: Research and innovation funding agencies, research and development organisations and enterprises, advisory and extension services and other providers of ICT to farmers, public services in environmental and agricultural administration, SMEs in rural areas, farmers, food chains, agricultural supply chains and consumers. The use of ICT and robotics in internal farm operations and in external farm business relations is growing fast, and compatible systems are becoming increasingly critical for achieving the full potential of the technology.
The ICT-AGRI-2 project has been based on the previous ERA-NET ICT-AGRI (Co-ordination of ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and Related Environmental Issues). A significant achievement of the first ICT-AGRI was the Strategic Research Agenda published in December 2012. The SRA identified research and innovation requirements for ICT and robotics in agriculture and provided recommendations for the implementation of the SRA. Similar recommendations appear in the Strategic Research Agenda from the FP7 project agriXchange. A major goal for ICT-AGRI-2 was to facilitate the implementation of the SRA through appropriately structured mapping and analysis of ongoing research and innovation followed by application of transnational joint calls and other coordination actions on topics of mutual interests. ICT-AGRI-2 has maintained, through mapping and consultation, extensive relations with stakeholders representing the complete chain from research to application. ICT-AGRI-2 has promoted transnational collaboration and critical mass by inviting national research and innovation programmes (including public-private partnerships) to participate in joint calls. ICT-AGRI has mobilised expertise from SMEs through network activities. ICT-AGRI-2 has collaborated with other ERA-NETs (Core Organic, C-IPM, ERA-GAS and SusAn and JPI-FACCE in order to share good practise and, where appropriate, conduct joint calls. ICT-AGRI2 has also worked together with the H2020 project e-ROSA in developing an e-infrastructure roadmap for open science in agriculture and food science.
In the pursuit of the principal objective of ICT-AGRI-2, to contribute to the development of an eco-efficient and competitive agriculture through an enhanced and improved use of ICT and robotics, six objectives with direct relation to the proposed work in the ICT-AGRI-2 were specified:
1. Transnational joint calls for coordinated research and innovation
2. Coordination within the European Research Area
3. Dissemination, online tools and sharing of good practices
4. Assessment of impacts of ERA-NET activities
5. Mapping and analysis of research and innovation and update of the Strategic Research Agenda
6. Efficient project management
Project Results:
Calls for coordinated research and innovation
The first call by ICT-AGRI-2 was run in 2015, one year after the start of ICT-AGRI-2 and shortly after the third call by ICT-AGRI-1 (together with SmartAgriFood). The title of the call was “Enabling Precision Farming” and the call text underlined the intention of the call to support projects, which would support the application of Precision Farming on farms and the uptake of Precision Farming by farmers. Twelve funding agencies contributed to the call with a total commitment of 5.66 m€.
The implementation of the call utilised a number of dedicated tools in the ICT-AGRI website for
· informing applicants about the call
· partner search and match making
· preparation and submission of proposals
· evaluation of eligibility by the funding agencies
· evaluation and ranking by experts
· selection by the funding agencies
The implementation performed efficiently and cost-effective for the applicants as well as the funding agencies.
The call attracted 19 valid pre-proposals and 17 full proposals, and resulted in 8 funded projects which means a success rate for the researchers of almost 50%. Two of the funded projects were created by amalgamating, in each case, two original proposals. This was based on recommendations from the expert panel. The funding agencies found that this amalgamation improved the quality of the projects as well as the utilisation of available funding.
Out of the total commitment, 1.6 m€ (28%) could not be used to fund projects. These were the commitments from Belgium, Latvia and Spain. The commitments from Belgium and Spain were intended for local SMEs and the failure in using these commitments gave rise to a discussion at the Governing Board meeting in October 2015. A possible reason to the failure could be the long and rather complicated two-step procedure of the call, which may not be attractive for SMEs. This issue was discussed at the ICT-AGRI-2 Governing Board meeting in October 2016.
ICT-AGRI Partnerships
The 2nd ICT-AGRI Call scheduled for 2016 was implemented by a novel model due to insufficient commitments from Funding Agencies to a normal virtual common pot call. As a replacement the ERA-NET had developed a novel concept named ICT-AGRI Partnerships. ICT-AGRI Partnerships concept is based on funding from national or regional Funding Agencies. The main difference is that the partners in a partnership are required to secure the funding individually from existing grants or from applications for new grants. A further option is to use own funding. The Funding Agencies are required to approve the use of their grants in an ICT-AGRI Partnership.
The advantages of the partnerships models are
· The partnerships model is well suited to support the implementation of agricultural research in ICT tools through a collaboration among agricultural researchers and ICT developers.
· The evaluation and approval procedures are simpler and faster, in particular when the partnership is based on existing grants.
· The partnerships may be more attractive for SMEs because of the simpler and faster procedure and less restrictive conditions on number of partners.
· The geographic basis is wider as there are no restrictions on countries.
The drawbacks of the partnerships model are
· The absence of funding dedicated to the specific area of ICT and Robotics in agriculture. An important incentive for potential applicants is thereby missing.
· It may be difficult for Funding Agencies to commit funding dedicated to transnational projects because the normal ERA-NET driven competitive selection is absent.
Funding Agencies not related to ICT-AGRI may find it more attractive to join ICT-AGRI Partnerships because they are not required to commit funding beforehand and they can apply their own funding regulations and selection procedures. National and regional as well as EU investments in ICT robotics related projects are increasing, and the needs for European/international collaboration and alignment are likewise increasing. The ICT-AGRI Partnerships is a possible instrument for collaboration and alignment. The incentives for researchers and companies to join partnerships are most likely to arise from Funding Agencies, who see this as a means for achieving most value for the investments.
The partnership call was integrated into the ICT-AGRI website and the call was launched in January 2016 with information on the website and in a newsletter to all registered users on the website. Partnering and submission tools were available in the website similarly to the first ICT-AGRI-2 Call in 2015, with the modifications required by a different call model.
Unfortunately, the call gained very little interest from funders as well as from applicants.
The third call by ICT-AGRI-2 was run in 2017.
The title of the call was “Farm Management Systems for Precision Farming” and the call text underlined the intention of the call to support projects, which will support the application of Precision Farming on farms and the uptake of Precision Farming by farmers by development of Farm Management Systems. Fifteen funding agencies contributed to the call with a total commitment of 5.28 m€. Among these were Argentina and New Zealand achieved by careful networking by ICT-AGRI partners concerning international collaboration.
For the implementation of the call the dedicated tools on the ICT-AGRI website were used again. The implementation performed efficiently and cost-effective for the applicants as well as the funding agencies.
The call attracted 13 valid full proposals, and resulted in 6 funded projects. Three of the projects were requested to make changes in the consortium due to lack of funding from the funding agencies. This was based on recommendations from the expert panel.
Out of the total commitment, 2.5 m€ (48%) could not be used to fund projects. The Dutch funding agency did not attract any applications, presumably due to rather strict rules concerning post-doc applicants, which were difficult to combine with near-market projects. The Irish funding agency did also not attract applications. The New Zealand funding agency received one application, but this was considered outside the scope of NZ funding as published in the call document. In addition, several proposals could not be funded due to lack of funding from one or two countries represented in the consortia.
In comparison with the first ICT-AGRI-2 call in 2015, this call attracted considerable more interest from private enterprises (SMEs), while the interest from academia was less than in 2015 and also less than in the ICT-AGRI-1 calls. It seems to be difficult to combine funding targeted at research with funding targeted at business development in trans-national calls.
A further call was launched in 2018 in collaboration with the SusAn and ERA-GAS ERA-NETS. It provided an opportunity for combining a number of different agricultural and environmental issues with ICT, for enabling a more Food System perspective to evolve. ICT-AGRI manages the call via the tools in the Meta Knowledge Base implemented in the ICT-AGRI website. SusAn and ERAGAS decided the agricultural topics in the call. ICT-AGRI added the topic about digitisation enabling the solution of the agricultural issues.
Coordination within the European Research Area
The ICT-AGRI ERA-NET was strongly committed to the principles of researcher career progression and researcher mobility in line with the objectives of the European Research Area. In line with this, applications were required to demonstrate a career development plan for all non-permanent researchers recruited to the prospective projects.
Facilitation of networking activities was an important task in the ICT-AGRI-2.
The goal was ‘to connect people working in the context of ICT-AGRI-2 in physical and social ways to be able to contribute to mutual learning, future collaboration and a reduction in duplication of activities.’
A first level of networking was amongst the ICT-AGRI partners. This took place during the regular Governing Board Meetings by dedicated learning and development sessions and with respect to social ways whenever ICT-AGRI-2 partners met.
A second level of networking was between ICT-AGRI-2 and the wider R&D community. This was facilitated by participation in and contributions to most national and European events with relation to ICT and robotics in agriculture and, furthermore, by providing presentations and organising workshops at major conferences including EFITA, EurAgEng, Manufuture, SmartAgriFood, CAPIGA and ECPA as well as several events arranged by the European Commission. Finally, by ICT-AGRI-2 conduction of larger events, such as the ICT-AGRI Seminar in Dublin (February 2016) and the ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen (November 2017). Especially the ICT-AGRI Conference was very successful with presentations from large industry and small ICT companies as well as researchers and funders on national and European levels. ICT-AGRI has at all occasions met a genuine interest from on all levels.
A third level of networking was amongst ICT-AGRI funded researchers on three occasions, Dublin February 2016, Copenhagen 2017 and Dublin November 2018. The common goal of these summits was to encourage mutual learning and future collaborations by bringing people together from ICT-AGRI funded projects. The responses from the researchers were very good as substantiated by representatives from 20 projects in 2016, 13 projects in 2017 and 17 projects in 2018. Lively discussions witnessed mutual interest in each other’s projects.
ICT-AGRI-2 has established a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) regarding support to the ”Organic Best Practices & Ecosystem Preservation Kick-Start Activity” offering support and funding to companies looking to develop space empowered services for the preservation of our environment. The ICT-AGRI-2 support to the Call with Opening date: 07 March 2018 and Closing date: 19 April 2018, was meant to inform the ICT-AGRI-2 constituency and ecosystem, 35 project coordinators all-in-all, about the call itself along with leaflets and information material advertising the call on the ICT-AGRI-2 website.
Dissemination, online tools and sharing of good practices
During ICT-AGRI it became clear that online tools were indispensable to perform the different tasks within the ERA-NET efficiently. Therefore, the Meta Knowledge Base (MKB) was developed as a central internet-based resource for multiple purposes. Initially the MKB was designed only for mapping purposes but it soon became the core instrument of the project. This tool proved to be very well suited to support all activities of the project, including:
- Search facilities for identifying organisations, professionals and ongoing projects
- Online consultation with stakeholders during the elaboration the Strategic Research Agenda
- Electronic submission system for ICT-AGRI transnational calls, which in combination with the search facilities proved very efficient for establishing new consortia
- Administration system for online handling of ICT-AGRI calls by the funding agencies, which provided a very cost-efficient administration of the transnational calls
- Online monitoring of ICT-AGRI funded projects
- Project website for dissemination of information about ICT-AGRI and results from ICT-AGRI
- Facilities for electronic submission of newsletters to registered users and subscribers
- Closed area for internal project administration and communication, including calendar, meeting preparation, task inventory, mailing lists, and document archive.
The MKB was enriched with new facilities in ICT-AGRI-2, including a number of tools in the closed management area for online communication and sharing of documents as well as a system for interactive project reporting. This system allowed ICT-AGRI funded projects to upload reports and documents to the public area of the website. The system also allowed projects to create a one-page project report in a standardised format. These reports are available in the website for a quick overview of the outcomes of projects. These reports also made it possible to decorate the walls in the conference room for the Copenhagen ICT-AGRI conference with posters describing 38 ICT-AGRI funded projects.
A major development was a mapping of recent projects related to ICT and robotics in agriculture. The mapping of had a double purpose, firstly to achieve an overview of current efforts in this domain, and secondly to mimic an Open Access resource of funded projects.
The mapping of projects is available for the public on the ICT-AGRI website. There are quite advanced search tools available for identifying projects within a specific sub-domain and the results of a search can be bookmarked for later personal or public use. The coordinators of the projects can be contacted by email (via a form on the website without displaying email addresses). There are two search methods implemented for searching mapped projects:
1. A simple search by one or more keywords. Words in title or summary must match a keyword exactly.
2. An advanced search with search profiles, which can contain several weighted keywords. Here keywords need only match a part of words in title or summary. Hits are sorted and limited by a score calculated as the sum of matching keywords. A search can be limited by minimum project end year and by minimum total budget.
Website users can bookmark projects by a collection tool. This is an easy way to store interesting projects for later use.
Five hundred projects were mapped. Some were mapped by imports directly from online repositories, e.g. Cordis and some SmartAgriFood websites. Most projects were entered manually by ICT-AGRI-2 with content taken from online sources.
Based on the interest by users of the ICT-AGRI website, it was concluded that data from early stages of R&D projects is a valuable source of information for planning of calls and development of collaboration. Implementation could be done by automated harvesting of data from national and international funding organisations.
Assessment of impacts of ERA-NET activities
The purpose of the assessment was to gain insight into prior or existing initiatives, to enable reflection on the achievements and assist in the identification of potential improvements.
The assessment was based on a comprehensive questionnaire directed to project partners in ICT-AGRI funded projects. In order to take the whole process of the ICT-AGRI projects into account, the questionnaire was structured according to five main stages: (1) call process, (2) inputs, (3) outputs, (4) outcomes and (5) impacts. Theoretically, the first two stages (1-2) consider aspects that can be evaluated before or at the beginning of the projects, whereas the three others stages (3-5) consider aspects that can be measured conclusively only after the projects have been finished.
The responses to the first two stages provided valuable information concerning the call process by pointing to possible improvements and information about the inputs from the project partners.
Because projects of the Calls 2014 and 2015 were still running at the time of the survey, only researchers involved in projects funded under the framework of the Calls 2010 and 2012 were able to give a feedback on the output of their work. ICT-AGRI funding played an important role for reaching the results’ aim, as 70% of the funded projects answered that without ICT-AGRI funding, between none and only 20% of their actual results would have been achieved. The immediate outputs generally reached the expectations with, for instance, an average of 5.6 publications (peer-reviewed articles, books and conference proceedings) and 7.2 meetings with the stakeholders per project partner. Regarding intermediate outputs, a total of 13 new methods, 17 new techniques and 20 new tools were developed within 8 projects. No patent applications were generated at that time, however, a total of 22 prototypes were already created and 22% of the projects created a marketable product or service.
It was not possible to extract conclusions concerning outcomes and impacts from the questionnaire because of the too short time from the end of projects.
Mapping and analysis of research and innovation and update of the Strategic Research Agenda
The mapping in ICT-AGRI-2 was conducted by all project partners with the purpose of producing three annual action plans for the implementation of the Strategic Research Agenda. The timing of the action plans was coordinated with the development of annual transnational calls for projects and other support and coordination activities in ICT-AGRI-2. These action plans consisted of a detailed analysis of the opportunities and hindrances for further progress of the use of ICT and robotics in agriculture and concrete suggestions for research, development and innovation actions to exploit the opportunities and overcome the hindrances. The target audience for the action plans were, apart from internal use in ICT-AGRI-2, RTD and innovation bodies at the European level (e.g. European Innovation Partnerships and Horizon 2020) and at the national level (e.g. RTD funding bodies and national Public-Private Partnerships).
The three annual action plans were supported by inputs from the R&D society gained at ICT-AGRI workshops organised in conjunction with major conferences as well as regular meetings with the ICT-AGRI Advisory Committee.
The development of an updated Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) took place over two main phases with a first version delivered by the end of the original project duration in December 2017 and the final version delivered in December 2018 after ICT-AGRI-2 being extended by a year.
In the extension year, ICT-AGRI-2 produced a mapping of the digitisation of the European agri-food space in a major report, which outlined the current trends of digitisation in the agro-food system. It looked at digitisation in agro-food systems in view of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement in relation to the formulated FOOD 2030 objectives.
In the 6 years since the first ICT-AGRI SRA, the use of new technologies in agriculture has grown immensely in significance and there is widespread expectation that we are on the cusp of a “digital revolution” in the agri-food sector, which is expected to revolutionize the primary sector, dissolve the boundaries between the agriculture and food systems, create new markets for data, as well as showing the importance of creating new global policies. This SRIA aims to review the main current and future challenges for sustainable agriculture as well as the key goals. In addition, to describe the state of the ICT and robotics art and trends as well as the current and future challenges of ICT and robotics adoption in agri-food systems.
The SRIA provides a vision for ICT-enabled agri-food systems: Up until this point, the ICT-AGRI ERA-NET, and other funding in the area of precision farming, has focused on projects related to food production at the farm level. However, suppliers, processors, retailers and consumers have also a huge influence on the production systems. The potential gains that exist from the automated ICT-based collection and analysis of data and the implementation of precision technologies can only be fully realised when the whole agri-food system and its dynamics and responsiveness is dealt with as a whole. This allows for feedback and learning mechanisms, whereby preferences of consumers and processors can influence the practices of primary producers, which can in turn influence the products developed by agriculture suppliers (e.g. seed companies). It also facilitates feed-forward mechanisms where information from the farm – which gives an indication of the likely quantity, quality and composition of primary products – can influence the short- and medium-term plans of processors, thereby minimizing waste, maximizing the efficiency of the system and facilitating the production of higher value end-products.
In addition, information on the provenance of food and the emissions associated with different foodstuffs can empower consumers. Data analysis across the whole system has the potential to lead to a significant reduction in inputs and emissions that should contribute to the reduction of the environmental footprint of the sector. The barriers that prevent adoption of new technologies by producers and others in the food chain will also have to be considered. The integrated systems perspective described will assist with this by facilitating the development of entirely new business models, whereby actors in the system other than primary producers may be willing to bear (some of) the cost of new technology in exchange for the downstream benefits of its adoption. A multi-actor approach to projects implementation will also be important to ensure that developed technologies will be taken-up by actors across the agri-food system.
Efficient project management
The project management has been based on a minimum of formalized procedures and a high degree of trust in the many people involved in the ICT-AGRI partners. This has left the resources of the project to be concentrated on work on subjects within the target R&D area and on interaction with stakeholders and colleagues. It is the feeling of the project managers that this has contributed significantly to a successful project.
Potential Impact:
The ICT-AGRI and ICT-AGRI-2 projects have been active in the decade from 2009 to 2018. During this decade, digitisation in a broad sense has changed business and social life radically. Although the effects on agriculture and food systems probably have been less disruptive as on many other business areas, the new technologies have also significantly changed the views on producing, distributing and consuming food.
The underlying rationale for ICT-AGRI was that ICT is required for meeting the grand challenges in the food systems. This is now also the rationale underlying policy-making in Europe on the national as well as the EU level. It would be an exaggeration to claim this as an impact of ICT-AGRI, but it is realistic to claim that ICT-AGRI has contributed to this change of views through extensive dissemination activities.
A further impact involves the organisations and people involved as partners in the ICT-AGRI projects. The resources provided by ICT-AGRI and the determination of the people have without doubt pushed to the acceptance of the importance of ICT in the organisations.
The ICT-AGRI calls have funded 38 transnational projects. The impact assessment made by ICT-AGRI-2 provides evidence for the early calls in 2010 and 2012 have funded R&D that would not have been done without ICT-AGRI funding as well as evidence for new technologies being generated from the funded projects. The projects have involved about 200 researchers and developers throughout Europe. For many of these the ICT-AGRI project would have been a first experience in international collaboration, leading to increased participation in European projects.
The ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen in November 2017 demonstrated through presentations and posters that agricultural ICT start-ups have arisen from an ICT-AGRI funded project.
The conclusion on impacts is that ICT-AGRI has been a significant player in the developments of digitisation in agriculture during the second decade of this century.
Dissemination activities
ICT-AGRI has been heavily engaged in networking with the wider R&D community.
This was facilitated by participation in and contributions to most national and European events with relation to ICT and robotics in agriculture. Furthermore, by providing presentations and organising workshops at major conferences including EFITA, EurAgEng, Manufuture, SmartAgriFood, CAPIGA and ECPA as well as several events arranged by the European Commission.
ICT-AGRI-2 has organised larger events as the ICT-AGRI Seminar in Dublin February 2016 and the ICT-AGRI Conference in Copenhagen November 2017. The Dublin Seminar included speakers from related Irish organisations and from several ICT-AGRI partners. The event attracted a great number of participants.
The ICT-AGRI Conference was very successful with presentations from large industry and small ICT companies as well as researchers and funders on national and European levels. The conference attracted 100 participants and it was broadcasted live to spectators throughout the world.
ICT-AGRI has produced a number of articles in popular and scientific publications. Articles produced by ICT-AGRI partners are listed elsewhere in this final report and articles produced by ICT-AGRI funded projects can be found in the ICT-AGRI website.
Exploitation of results
The ICT-AGRI-2 project consortium has 23 partners and four observer organisations covering 17 countries. The principal objective has been to contribute to the development of an eco-eficient, resource-efficient and competitive agriculture through an enhanced and improved use of ICT and robotics. ICT-AGRI-2 conducted calls in 2015, 2017 and 2018 resulting in 14 projects so far. Many of the projects resulted in practical solutions for a smart agriculture or even in start-ups. A report on the research impact was developed. The report can be found on the ICT-AGRI website.
List of Websites:
Website: www.ict-agri.eu
Coordinator: Niels Gøtke (nigoe@ufm.dk)