AgroecologyTech (2021-2022): Supporting small grape and olive producers in applying agroecology and circular economy practices with the help of data-driven technology innovations
Climate change and environmental degradation result to an increasing pressure on farmers to adopt sustainable production approaches such as agroecology. At the same time, farmers are facing an increasing number of additional pressures, such as productivity pressures and skewed chain power that have a significant impact on their sustainability. Finally, there is a lack of appropriate Smart Farming (SF) tools for supporting the decision making of small producers that try to adopt agroecology practices. AgroecologyTech project, which was funded under the PREPARE Open Call of the H2020 SmartAgriHubs project, focused on designing an Innovation Experiment (IE) aiming to develop IoT and AI-powered Smart Farming services for small organic grape and olive producers applying agroecology practices, to support their everyday decisions on irrigation, pest management and fertilization. In addition, the IE focuses on developing a monitoring tool to support decision making in the production of organic compost following circular economy practices. In the context of the project, GreenSupplyChain DIH adopted a lean multi-actor approach to engage the four (4) supported organisations in co-designing the proposed digital innovations of the IE in a demand-driven and flexible way.