EIP-AGRI Seminar “Digital Innovation Hubs: mainstreaming digital agriculture”

The overall objective of the “Digitising European Industry” Communication (COM(2016)180) is to ensure that “any industry in Europe, big or small, wherever situated and in any sector can fully benefit from digital innovations to upgrade its products, improve its processes and adapt its business models to the digital change”.

The farming sector has never stopped innovating and every generation brings new technological and organisational improvements and competencies. However, the pace of technological innovation is proceeding faster than ever before and it is important to ensure that EU farmers take full advantage of this “digital revolution”.

ICT developers and agricultural businesses are keen to assess which technologies, including the most disruptive ones like the Internet of Things, Big Data, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence etc., could help the sector meet the current challenge of ‘producing more with less’. However, the farming sector can find it difficult to see the real added value of these technologies, to decide which ones to invest in, when to invest and to what extent.