Connecting the dots to unleash the innovation potential for digital transformation of the European agri-food sector

Project Information

SmartAgriHubs

Grant agreement ID: 818182

DOI

10.3030/818182

Project closed

EC signature date 11 October 2018

Start date 1 November 2018

End date 30 November 2022

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 22 400 850,78

EU contribution

€ 19 999 458,62

Coordinated by

STICHTING WAGENINGEN RESEARCH
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SmartAgriHubs (Connecting the dots to unleash the innovation potential for digital transformation of the European agri-food sector)

Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Digital technologies enable a transformation into data-driven, intelligent, agile and autonomous farm operations, and are generally considered as a key to address the grand challenges for agriculture. On the one hand we see more and more promising (advanced) solutions being developed, but on the other hand for broad application in pan European agriculture it is still in an early stage. For boosting the digital transformation in EU agriculture we need to bridge the state of the art projects and technology with the needs of farmers in the regions all over Europa. For this challenge the concept of local Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs), in the proximity of farmers, with access to state of the art technology and knowledge, needed to be explored, developed and tested. The SmartAgriHubs project (SAH) has been able to operationalize the concept of DIHs and established a broad network of 400 DIHs, all over Europe. Each of these DIHs has the ambition to stimulate and facilitate digitals innovation in the local farming practice. The project also succeeded to get countries involved in the agri-digital ecosystem that used to be less involved in digital innovation EU projects. This is in particular visible in Eastern and Northern Europe.
The project has embraced a number (ca. 50) of very successful DIHs that are able to get local stakeholders connected, and provide a mature set of services to generate digital innovation in their region. In the 4 years of SAH these successful DIHs have been substantially supported in their development by the benefits of being part of a European network. This proofs that the principle of ‘connecting the dots’ and empowering the DIHs is actually working. For new DIHs that started during the course of the project, it needs more time to grow to a mature state. We expect that a large number of them (over 200) will be able to take this step in the upcoming period. They already acknowledged the added value and necessity of operating in a large European network to further develop the DIH services. That is why they are very keen to continue the cooperation and showed commitment in offering services to keep the SAH network alive.

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

In the first reporting period the SAH project managed to design, develop and implement an Innovation Portal to facilitate communication and interaction in the SAH network. During the project the content of the Innovation Portal attracted more and more users. The network overview, set of good practices, news, calls for proposals, event calendar and various tools, this all supported by strong and active social media channels, turned out to be beneficial and attractive for the community involved in digital innovation in agriculture. At the moment, the Innovation Portal has over 4300 users working in about 1000 organisations and is definitely the place to be for anyone related to digital agriculture and is a basic pillar for the lively ecosystem, and is important for continuation after the project’s end.
To support DIHs in building their capacities, their needs were identified and prioritized. The maturity self-assessment tool was implemented during the second period to help DIHs to develop and improve their portfolio of services and give them direction on where their efforts should focus on. Thereafter, the capacity building materials and (recorded) webinars in the Innovation Portal, a social Learning and Exchange Platform (LXP) was developed to accelerate social (peer-to-peer) learning amongst DIHs. The Competence Centres (CCs) contribute to the DIHs by providing digital technological knowledge, experience and infrastructure for development and testing. The Agricultural Technology Navigator (ATN) has been developed and implemented, so that CCs can register and showcase their agri-tech competences in the Innovation Portal.
The project started with 28 so-called Flagship Innovation Experiments (FIEs), each of them targeting to develop, implement and test an innovative digital solution. Moreover these FIEs also had an important function in developing DIH services. Active involvement of DIHs in FIEs should help DIHs to identify where they could provide added value and develop services on those contributions that can be used in other Innovation Experiments. Apart from result that benefits the local farmers, the FIEs also contributed as active and visible examples and inspiration for other innovative digital solutions. While monitoring the FIEs at project level, lessons learned and reusable components were collected and have been made available on the Innovation Portal.
During the first period of the project, the foundation has been laid for the SAH Open calls by understanding the current situation and regional demands. Responding on the dynamics in the project, 6 different open calls, each of them with a specific objective, have been launched. These different open calls generated in total 215 submitted proposals with 731 organisations involved. In total, 76 proposals were selected for funding, involving 320 organisations with more than 14 M€ additional budget generated.
The project has been presented at numerous stakeholder events in EU and outside Europe. Regarding the policy-makers target group, a special event in the European Parliament (October 2021) was designed to combine the need of supporting young farmers and foster the use of digital tools. Communication about the project is supported by a state-of-the-art Innovation Portal and multi media exposure.

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)

During the project it was observed that the DIHs in the FIEs were not as active as hoped for. Several attempts to activate them did not work and it had to be concluded that most DIHs are not yet ready, mature enough for contributing to the FIEs. Generating the IEs for the open calls did not work out as was optimistically hoped for at the time of the proposal writing. Responding on these observations and conclusions, the SAH team concluded that it was needed to step back from the initial objectives to initiate and develop IEs. The last two open calls were specifically launched for facilitating DIHs to develop and mature their portfolio of services where proposals need to be based on a self-assessment report of the DIH.
A survey among the DIHs revealed that 200 DIHs (all over Europe) are actively involved in digital innovation activities, 150 DIHs are in a starting phase. One of the developments that arose during the project was the introduction of the EDIH programme. Around 50 SAH DIHs are part of or connected to an EDIH.
The SAH project was committed to the principle of equality between women and men, enshrined as one of the European Union’s core values in the Lisbon Treaty. Together with other projects a joint task force was established to bring focused attention to this issue, moving it into the spotlight and placing it at the centre of efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment in digital innovation in the agri-food sector. The work of the task force will continue after the project’s end in other (EU) projects.
The last year of the project was dedicated to sustain the results of the project. A SAH light weight organisation has been developed and implemented to continue SAH activities; to keep the network alive, the DIHs active and the Innovation Portal up to date. For the next two years most of the partners signed the MoU for their contribution and DIHs expressed the continuation of their role by signing Letters of Intent.

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