Internet of Food and Farm 2020

Project Information

IoF2020

Grant agreement ID: 731884

DOI

10.3030/731884

Project closed

EC signature date 21 November 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 31 March 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 34 089 926,50

EU contribution

€ 29 999 528,02

Coordinated by

STICHTING WAGENINGEN RESEARCH
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - IoF2020 (Internet of Food and Farm 2020)

Reporting period: 2020-01-01 to 2021-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The internet of things (IoT) has a revolutionary potential. A smart web of sensors, actuators, cameras, robots, drones and other connected devices allows for an unprecedented level of control and automated decision-making. The project Internet of Food & Farm 2020 (IoF2020) has explored the potential of IoT-technologies for the European food and farming industry.
The goal was ambitious: to make precision farming a reality and to take a vital step towards a more sustainable food value chain. With the help of IoT technologies higher yields and better-quality produce are within reach. Pesticide and fertilizer use will drop and overall efficiency is optimized. IoT technologies also enable better traceability of food, leading to increased food safety.
Thirty-three use-cases organised around five trials (arable, dairy, fruits, meat and vegetables) developed, tested and demonstrated the use of IoT technologies in an operational farm environment all over Europe. IoF2020 uses a lean multi-actor approach focusing on user acceptability, stakeholder engagement and the development of sustainable business models.

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

The Use Case have been facilitated sharing, reuse and integration of IoT components. Therefore a reference architecture with minimum interoperability mechanisms was defined based on common IoT architectures, standards and data models but extended and adapted for farming and food. Each use case was an autonomous implementation of this architecture ensuring maximum interoperability between and re-use of components. Most of these results are taken up by succeeding projects (e.g. Atlas, Demeter) and are further exploited through the FIWARE community. Contributions to standards were made and adopted by the designated organizations such as AEF, AgGateway, GS1). Each use case implementation is described in the IoT catalogue.

Business support was provided to the Use Cases in terms of monitoring KPIs, developing business models, user acceptance testing, market studies and governance aspects (incl. data ownership, privacy, liability and ethical issues). This has resulted in market uptake of the IoT solutions or component parts; more than half of the Use Cases managed to have revenues during the project lifetime. Other use cases at least have made significant steps towards market readiness of their solutions. The activities and experiences were put together in a business modelling toolbox that will be used in succeeding projects, in particular the SmartAgriHubs project. Another result is the significant contribution to the Code of Conduct for agricultural data sharing and further development of that will also be included in new projects. Lessons learned in the Use case that were relevant for the public sector have been collected in a report on policy recommendations.

IoF2020 actively worked successfully on development and expansion of the various ecosystems on use case and project level and beyond amongst others by communication, dissemination, organizing workshops, demonstrations and events. This was done through active involvement of European and national communities from the demand- and supply-side of IoT, including industry associations and cooperatives, European Innovation Partnerships, Technology Platforms and ERAnets. This has led to a substantial quantitative and qualitative growth of the IoF2020 ecosystem.

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)

From the very start, the use cases were forced to define their economic, ecological and social impact, setting clear and ambitious key performance indicators on these three sustainability pillars. For many of these indicators significant improvements could be demonstrated by use of IoT technologies. Fostering a symbiotic ecosystem of technology providers and agri-food players, IoF2020 has contributed to secure Europe’s leading position in the global IoT industry. Significant contribution was made to development of open standards and open platforms. This has created new opportunities for entrepreneurs promoting new market openings, providing access to valuable datasets and direct interactions with users, expanding local businesses to European scale. Innovation was done in a responsible way focusing on user acceptance validation accounting for privacy, security, vulnerability, liability, user needs, -concerns and -expectations of IoT solutions. In this way it is expected to impact the European citizens' quality of life, in the public and private spheres, in terms of autonomy, convenience and comfort, participatory approaches, health and lifestyle providing more comfort for farmers, food safety traceability and environmental protection. Altogether IoF2020 contributed to a more secure, safe and adequate food for the future generations of European citizens.

The IoF2020 project has demonstrated how IoT can be implemented and used in farming and food production for many different sectors and application areas. This was done by integrating and re-using available IoT technologies based on open architectures and standards. By providing active business support many solutions or components have already found their way to the market ensuring a large-scale uptake and others have made significant progress towards market readiness. A large and coherent European ecosystem has been developed, which will continue to grow and flower through new projects and Digital Innovation Hubs, especially supported by the SmartAgriHubs project. In this way IoF2020 has fostered a large-scale take-up of IoT in the European farming and food domain boosted digital innovation and consequently improved productivity and sustainability.

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