Do digital agriculture better
-
What is SmartAgriHubs?SmartAgriHubs is dedicated to accelerating the digital transformation of the European agri-food sector. It will consolidate, activate and extend the current ecosystem by building a network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) that will boost the uptake of digital solutions by the farming sector. This will be achieved by integrating technology and business support in a local one-stop- shop approach involving all regions and all relevant players in Europe. The heart of the project is formed by 28 flagship innovation experiments demonstrating digital innovations in agriculture, facilitated by DIHs from 9 Regional Clusters including all European member states. Concurrently, SmartAgriHubs will improve the maturity of innovation services of DIHs so that digital innovations will be replicated across Europe and widely adopted by European farmers. A lean multi-actor approach focusing on user acceptability, stakeholder engagement and sustainable business models will boost technology and market readiness levels and bring user adoption to the next level. This will be enhanced by synergetic effects between SmartAgriHubs and RIS3, since SmartAgriHubs will work in lock step with European regions to maximize the return of European investments, including regional structural funds and private capital. Open Calls with a total budget of ±6 M€ will expand the network and ensure that technological developments and emerging challenges of the agri-food sector are incorporated in the DIH service portfolio. SmartAgriHubs’ inclusive structure and ambitious targets will bring the entire European ecosystem together, connecting the dots to ensure global leadership for Europe in the AgTech market. The consortium, led by Wageningen Research and other partners of previous key projects such as IoF2020, FIWARE, S3P Agri- Food and I4MS, will leverage the existing ecosystem and guarantee a maximum ROI for European taxpayers and a vital agri-food sector producing adequate and safe food for future generations.
-
So where do we fit in?
SmartRDI is a member of the mAgro Digital Innovation Hub from the South-East Europe Regional Cluster and is focused on the success of the “SmartAgriHubs – Quick & Mass Animal Identification with IoT devices” Flagship Innovation Experiment.
The experiment will be designed and implemented as an open-access entry to the existing / upgraded datacenter to collect, organize, operate and report standard animal identification, movements and behavioral data using IoT, i.e. RFID and/or BLE technologies (as hardware), a dedicated platform for animal tracking (as software) and data collection (made by a minimum of 100 farmers).
The overall objective is to offer an easy and reliable online access for farmers self-registering, monitoring animals’ movements for efficient traceability under advanced reliability and security requirements. The technology used will offer a larger range of scanning / reading, as well as the bulk reading of data for a high number of animals, increasing significantly the speed of the movements tracking process, a higher working safety for the operators, a higher accuracy of data sent to the database and as a consequence, an improved animal traceability overall.
The project aims to design, build and operate an integrated information system to collect, process and store information about holdings (farms, slaughterhouses, fairs and markets, rendering units, etc.), animals (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses) with their movements, events and owners, decreasing dramatically the number of paper forms, in benefit of operators and in higher accuracy of the data.
The main identified challenges are:
- creating the database structure, web applications and farmers / authorities related services;
- creating the connections / network among a group of minimum 100 farmers;
- creating the network and communication between the devices (device to device);
- connecting with existing national authorities (Ministry of Agriculture, National Authority);
- testing the new remote access identification smart-beacon devices;
- demonstrating and validating the system model services.
-
Connecting the dots to unleash the innovation potential for digital transformation of the European agri-food sector