Digital agriculture in Europe and in France: which organisations can boost adoption levels?

Abstract

This paper presents the way the digital transformation of the agricultural sector is implemented in Europe and in France. It describes the main European and national strategies, the structure of research and innovation initiatives, and the investment in capacity building to foster innovation, adoption and use. More specifically, the French research and innovation ecosystem on digital agriculture is described. The actors involved come from different organisations, such as research and higher educational institutes, government agencies, agricultural technology (AgTech) companies, farmer unions etc., and work together by means of associations (e.g. Robagri), networks (e.g. RMT Naexus, DigiFermes, Fermes Leader), or living labs (e.g. Occitanum) on both digital technology assessment and co-design. Additionally, support is devoted to capacity building (e.g. Le Mas numérique, Mobilab) and a better understanding of the drivers of adoption and use of digital technologies (e.g. FrOCDA). Among these various organisations, #DigitAg, the Digital Agriculture Convergence Lab, has been created to foster interdisciplinary research on digital agriculture. All these initiatives aim to use digital technologies to support the European Green Deal, Farm-to-Fork and Biodiversity strategies as well as the French orientation towards more agroecological practices for safer and more sustainable food systems. Even though this organisational ecosystem is developing fast, the objective of encouraging the coevolution of both digital and green transformations is not without challenges that still need to be overcome, either through new research, innovations, initiatives or collaborations between the actors involved.

Tracking the diverse pathways to value for digital agriculture

“…These develop technology applications based on a strong public science base, fostered through a strong concentric integration between actors within the agricultural system. This is the intended outcome of research policy in France and the EU to support digital agriculture (Bellon-Maurel et al 2023). The process is also implicit in the public-private partnerships reported for Australia (Hansen et al 2023;Lawes et al 2023) and in the digital agriculture start-ups observed in India (Goswami et al 2023).…”

Digitainability and open innovation: how they change innovation processes and strategies in the agrifood sector?

“…The beginning of the use of digital technologies in the agrifood sector can be considered as having appeared with the creation of web pages (Bellon-Maurel et al, 2023). It started by presenting information, before considering the dematerialization of declarations, such as those related to fertilization practices, or developing new distribution channels, such as online platforms.…”