Sustainable crop protection solutions up close A new multilingual platform aims to boost the technological preparedness of farms across the EU to ensure more sustainable and environmentally friendly practices. Food and Natural Resources © INNOSETA The adoption of new technologies and agriculture digitalisation are priority objectives to meet challenges of the European Green Deal, including the recently launched European Farm to Fork Strategy and the new common agricultural policy. Farmers will require appropriate and effective training to acquire the relevant knowledge and skills to meet these challenges. Today, however, the degree of adoption of new technologies is heterogeneous across EU Member States and between different types of farms. The EU-funded INNOSETA project established an innovative self-sustainable thematic network on spraying equipment, training and advising (SETA). The aim was to help close the gap between available high-end crop protection solutions and everyday European agricultural practices. For the past two years, INNOSETA has been facilitating the exchange of novel ideas and information amongst the research, industry and farming communities so that existing research and commercial solutions can be widely communicated and innovative ideas from the farming community captured. Free platform tailored to the needs of the spraying community Today, the INNOSETA platform, available in seven languages, has become a well-recognised instrument offering stakeholders practical information on best management practices, simple and useful calibration tools, and engaging training material, especially relevant for family farms. It currently boasts about 300 industry solutions, 80 projects, 400 training materials and 190 papers. In addition, the project platform promotes developments and tools from other public and privately financed projects (most of them EU projects), in a logical, easy-to-use format. Combined with all the activities taking place within the project, it contributes to raising awareness about the need to improve the global crop protection scenario. “INNOSETA helps close the gap between research and farmers,” says project coordinator Emilio Gil. “Taking advantage of already existing tools, the project promotes the adoption of new technologies, increases the educational level of stakeholders and facilitates the implementation of EU rules for a more sustainable and safe use of plant protection products.” Moreover, the platform can have technical, environmental, social and economic benefits for different stakeholder communities. Project partners have already developed a free and public database of plant protection product technologies and materials where manufacturers, academia, authorities, advisors and final users (farmers) can upload, store and find practical tools for their daily work. Gaining global popularity amongst stakeholders The project’s long-term impact is linked with future EU policy developments. Regional and transnational workshops and other activities already conducted have proven to be important for collecting needs, suggestions, problems and proposals from all the stakeholder groups, as well as gathering input on pros and cons, difficulties encountered and suggestions for further improvements. As INNOSETA comes to a close, the project consortium is working hard to continue updating and expanding the platform content. This includes enlarging as much as possible the list of available SETAs (currently over 1 000 entries) and promoting and disseminating the platform within the EU territory and globally. Partners also aim to establish a practical and feasible solution to guarantee the sustainability of the platform to ensure this investment doesn’t become obsolete. Keywords INNOSETA, crop protection, farmers, farming, agriculture, spraying equipment, family farms, education
