SpAce-AIr-Ground Last Mile InfRastructure & Dynamic PrOgrAmmable DistRibuted EnvIronment For Edge FArmiNg

Project Information

AGRARIAN

Grant agreement ID: 101134128

DOI

10.3030/101134128

EC signature date 22 November 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 4 997 726,25

EU contribution

€ 4 997 726,25

Coordinated by

"NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ""DEMOKRITOS"""
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AGRARIAN (SpAce-AIr-Ground Last Mile InfRastructure & Dynamic PrOgrAmmable DistRibuted EnvIronment For Edge FArmiNg)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The transformation of food production through digital technologies demands more than advanced devices and processing capabilities. It requires a holistic, inclusive framework that connects all key stakeholders across the agri-food chain. The AGRARIAN project (SpAce-AIr-Ground Last Mile InfRastructure & Dynamic PrOgrAmmable DistRibuted EnvIronment For Edge FArmiNg) addresses this need by bridging the gap between technology providers, end-users and decision-makers, fostering a resilient and accessible digital ecosystem for sustainable agriculture.
AGRARIAN develops and validates a unified, modular platform that enables farmers, developers and policy makers to collaborate through a common digital environment. The platform supports easy user interaction, automated deployment of smart farming applications, and real-time data processing at the edge, while integrating hybrid communication technologies (such as terrestrial 5G, Wi-Fi, and non-terrestrial satellite networks) to ensure continuous service availability in remote and rural areas.
A key innovation of AGRARIAN is its ability to support both localized decision-making for individual farms and macro-level insights across clusters of farms. By aggregating and analyzing edge-collected data, AGRARIAN enhance policy makers with strategic, data-driven tools to shape sustainable agricultural policies. At the same time, the platform minimizes the technical burden on farmers and encourages continuous digital service development by providing a scalable, developer-friendly infrastructure.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

AGRARIAN develops core technological components towards a dynamic, integrated platform for sustainable agriculture. The project focuses on implementing an accessible and scalable digital ecosystem to support remote and underserved farming communities, while enabling the aggregation of distributed agricultural data for collective policy-making.
One of the primary technical outcomes to date is the development of a user-centric web portal that allows farmers to seamlessly access and deploy applications from a curated repository. This portal is designed with simplicity in mind, lowering the entry barrier for non-technical users and enabling them to select agricultural tools based on their immediate needs (e.g. animal detection, irrigation monitoring or crop health assessment).
In technical level, the platform utilizes a lightweight Kubernetes-based orchestrator (K3s) to dynamically deploy and manage these applications at the network edge. This orchestration layer automates application installation and scaling, adapting to the available edge resources and ensuring efficient service delivery with minimal user intervention.
To address connectivity challenges in rural environments, AGRARIAN integrates hybrid communication technologies, including terrestrial networks (Wi-Fi, 4G/5G) and non-terrestrial links, such as low-earth orbit satellite systems with onboard processing power (e.g. cube satellites). This ensures reliable and redundant communication, even in the event of local network failure, supporting uninterrupted operation of the platform and minimal latency.
The edge processing layer enables real-time analysis of sensor and drone-collected data near the data source. This reduces delays and bandwidth consumption while increasing system responsiveness. A sample use case already validated involved drone-based video streaming for sheep detection, processed in real time via an AI model running on a local edge server.
Finally, AGRARIAN has introduced the Agricultural Decision Support System (ADSS). This platform component consume selected outputs from multiple farm applications, aggregates them across farm clusters and delivers strategic insights optimized for policy makers. These insights support decision-making at regional or national level, moving beyond individual farm optimization to systemic agricultural improvement.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

AGRARIAN has developed a novel digital agriculture platform that addresses current limitations in service accessibility, deployment flexibility and rural connectivity. Its most impactful results include:
- A single platform enabling farmers to request and run advanced farming applications with minimal technical barriers.
- Easy integration of services by developers using a dedicated environment with continuous deployment capabilities.
- Seamless service delivery using a combination of terrestrial and satellite communication, validated under challenging field conditions.
- Aggregated data and insights accessible to policy makers to support evidence-based agricultural strategies.
To support wider technology adoption, AGRARIAN is planning further trials, through third parties funding (open calls), open demonstrations and technology sharing to public. While the platform is currently shared within the consortium, further work will assess the need for intellectual property protection of individual components or interfaces. IPR support may be required to evaluate and establish patents, manage ownership among partners and ensure a balanced exploitation strategy after the completion of the project.