Agricultural technology experts from across the globe gathered in Waterford this week for the launch of a new project that will digitally transform Europe’s agri-food sector and support vibrant rural areas.
Called 'the Demeter project', it hopes to show how field and plant sensors, weather stations, monitoring and control devices could help support sustainable and safe farming and food production systems.
It will also monitor plant and animal products during their life cycle from farm to fork, increasing on-farm profitability, lowering farming’s ecological footprint and decreasing the use of natural resources.
The €17 million project, funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, will involve 25 deployment sites, 6,000 farmers and over 38,000 devices and sensors being deployed, spanning 318,000 hectares in 18 countries.
It includes 60 partners and together, they will run 20 different pilot programmes across five agricultural sectors.
Sustainable & Safe
In Ireland, Teagasc will be involved in a project on animal wellbeing, which will see the group work with tech experts in areas such as waste and energy management, precision machinery, healthy and high-quality crops, livestock and animal health, supply chain robotics and interoperability.
An open call interested parties will be launched next year, Kevin Doolin, director of innovation at the Telecommunications, Software and Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology, confirmed.
“Demeter will demonstrate the real-life potential of advanced interoperability in the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies across the value chain in multiple agri-food operational environments, involving different production sectors, production systems and farm sizes,” Doolin said.
“Demeter also displays how an integrated approach to business, behaviour and technology can support farmers and the sector.”
“It provides further opportunities, including new business models on the farm and in the wider agri-food economy, while also helping to safeguard Europe’s precious natural resources,” he added.
© 2019 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click sign-up to subscribe to Checkout.
