Dr. Sjaak Wolfert

Digital innovation in agri-food is much more a social experiment than a technical challenge, requiring socio-economic insights. Projects on digital innovation still focus a lot on technicalities and insufficiently take the user experience as a starting point. Besides, not enough attention is paid to the business model of digital solutions. Defining a business case for e.g. a farmer as end-user is step 1, but all parties involved in the solution, should also have a positive, shared business model. This is a more difficult step. Many factors influence choices in the design of a digital solution and therefore regular interaction between the relevant stakeholders must be facilitated. Therefore, social innovation should be leading in the design process in order to upscale digital solutions in the agri-food sector.

Science has the potential to develop technologies that can boost productivity whilst addressing resource scarcities and environmental problems. Research findings suggest that digital technologies such as Precision Agriculture, Smart Farming, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence in agri-food are key technologies to develop sustainable agriculture. However, this promise still has to be fulfilled and my previous answer suggests that we still have a way to go to achieve the desired sustainability impact. And I also have to admit that digital agriculture as such will not solve sustainability issues on its own. It should be part of overall systemic changes that are required.

First of all, I think that agri-food production systems have proven to be quite resilient. Except for a few typical food products such as rice and pasta, food supply chains were hardly disrupted. What really got disrupted - and still is - was the health system. I won’t say that we will be able to fully defeat future pandemics, but it is clear that healthy people got less chance to become severely ill. From agri-food perspective, new strategies should therefore focus on supplying food that improves people’s health. Also, here digital technologies can be of help e.g. to monitor and influence people’s food intake and behavior.

Yes, I agree that adoption should go much faster. But referring to my answer on the first question, paying more attention to the business model of digital solutions is perhaps even more important here. Smallholder farms have less money to spend to invest in digital technologies. A service-oriented approach in which farmers don’t have to invest in the hardware themselves, can be a good approach. But access to technologies is not only hampered by money alone. It can also be education and skills levels that is hindering adoption. Upscaling adoption requires an integrated approach that should involve all stakeholders such as smallholder famers in the innovation process.

In the Mansholt Lecture that I held in Brussels, I showed how the digital transformation in agri-food has entered a twilight zone where innovations have proven to be promising, but must be upscaled to a higher level of adoption and broader integration. A paradigm shift is needed to navigate properly through this twilight zone involving of multiple aspects such as collaboration, trust, inclusion around topics such as data sharing and new business models.

The EU-funded large-scale pilot ‘Internet of Food and Farm 2020 (IoF2020)’ has developed and applied an integrated approach that tries to address this. Many of the 33 use case projects within that project have shown how to work on digital innovation in a successful way.

Although a lot can still be improved in Europe, I think we have been able to apply this integrated approach that I described before already in a good way. EU-funded projects often require a multi-actor approach that facilitates co-creation between stakeholders. In the new calls for projects, we see the requirement to involve social sciences and humanities, which is good.

In general, you could also say that there is a good interaction and flow between fundamental research and more applied research. Finally, European policies such as the digital single market strategy help to create level playing fields and set clear rules and conditions for digital innovation. In conclusion, Europe might not be the frontrunner in developing the latest technical tour de force, but rather be a champion in embedding digital solutions in a sustainable way for food systems.