Scenarios for European agricultural policymaking in the era of digitalisation

CONTEXT Digitalisation affects the agri-food sector and its governance. However, what digitalisation of the sector will imply for future agricultural policymaking remains unclear. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study is to develop and evaluate explorative scenarios of digitalisation in the agri-food sector of Europe that are explicitly relevant to agricultural policy. The study aims to provide guidance for strategic development of agricultural policy to address the potentials, uncertainties and unknowns arising with digitalisation of the sector. METHODS We combine a Delphi study and a participatory scenario workshop to develop and evaluate plausible explorative scenarios of digitalisation of Europe's agri-food sector. For all scenarios we identify gaps in achieving a range of important European agricultural policy goals, drawing on the Delphi study and desk-based analysis. Subsequently we deduce strategies to address these agricultural policy gaps. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Four scenarios of digitalisation of the agri-food sector were developed for Europe in 2030. They comprise of 1) digitalisation of the sector following current directions at current rates as a baseline scenario, 2) strong digitalisation of a regulatory government, 3) use of autonomous farming technology and 4) digitalised food business. These explorative scenarios entail various gaps in achieving European agricultural policy goals. Our findings suggest that the baseline scenario needs strategies to ramp up technological and institutional infrastructure for digitalisation. The other scenarios need strategies to prevent risks, e.g., of technological failures or undesired social impacts. They also need strategies to cater for special cases and diversity, e.g., of ecosystems and farming practices. Across the scenarios, it seems useful to increase digital competencies of the stakeholders. SIGNIFICANCE The study is the first that derives implications for policy strategies from explorative scenarios of future digitalisation of agricultural systems that target gaps in achieving agricultural policy goals. The combination of developing and analysing scenarios generated findings that are of significance to policymaking stakeholders and researchers alike, who all need to address the uncertainties arising with future digitalisation of the agri-food sector

A Future Internet Collaboration Platform for Safe and Healthy Food from Farm to Fork

It is expected that the world population will further expand from the current 6 billion to 9-11 billion people in 2050. This faces us with an enormous challenge to feed this population and still keep production within the limits of planet Earth's carrying capacity. Smart Farming - i.e. the use of smart, data-rich ICT-services and applications, in combination with advanced hardware (in tractors, greenhouses, etc.) - can provide the much needed breakthroughs to producing enough good quality food in a safe and environmental-sound way. This paper introduces a Future Internet platform - called FIspace - for business to business collaboration that is currently being developed within Europe's Future Internet Public-Private Partnership programme (FI-PPP). On top of that a specific implementation will be made for the area of Smart Farming that will enable a global approach for Apps and Services development. It is expected that this will overcome many of the current bottlenecks in ICT development for Smart Farming such as interoperability and handling large amounts of data, and that it will lead to more agile and affordable software solutions. In this way, this development can contribute to the global challenge of producing enough safe and healthy food for the future within planet Earth's carrying capacity. New projects are planned and collaboration in Europe and beyond should further leverage the platform. The ambition is to become world-leading in this area