FEATURE
Driving Digital Transformation in the Agri-Food Sector
By Hazel Peavoy, Strategic Business Manager, Walton Institute.
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tories about transformational innovation are more believable and compelling when they involve an urgent and escalating issue. Ireland’s Agriculture sector competes not on quantity, but on quality. With an ever increasing demand on food production, to help feed the worlds growing population, we are starting to see the pressure this is placing on our natural environment.
DEMETER pilot farmer.
The current pandemic has led to the wide recognition of the importance of digital transformation for our immediate economic recovery and future resilience. With a strong focus on reshaping the agri-food sector through the use of agricultural technologies (AgriTech), with applications of intelligent secure Internet of Things (IoT) networks, artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC) and a strong focus on datadriven analytical techniques. The Irish Government recently announced funding of €40 million for a north-south research programme under the Shared Island Fund. The package is intended to support deepening links between higher education institutions (HEIs), researchers and research communities on the island of Ireland – and is the single largest allocation from the €500 million fund to date. The aim is to build on the cooperation which already exists between partner institutions on the issues that matter to us including agriculture and food product development. Walton Institute is an internationally recognised centre of excellence for ICT research and innovation and one of the most successful ICT research centres in Ireland, securing funding of €120 million under EU Programmes. As a multidisciplinary ICT centric research institute, Walton Institute’s research vision is to utilise ICT that can be expanded towards various applications including future healthcare, transport, environmental protection, cybersecurity, energy and agriculture. The precision agriculture specialist area within Walton Institute focuses on investigating novel paradigms of how technology will transform food production to meet humanity’s demands in the future. The team at Walton works on both national
and international projects, applying their expertise to areas of great impact, ranging from novel communication paradigms that will derive and relay information about dairy farming, interoperable smart farming-IoT based platforms, to the digitisation of Europe’s agricultural sector by fostering an Irish ecosystem that will contribute to innovative excellence, sustainability and success. DEMETER DEMETER is a Horizon 2020 project which aims to lead the digital transformation of Europe’s agri-food sector through the rapid adoption of advanced IoT technologies, data science and smart farming, ensuring its long-term viability and sustainability. Twenty real-world pilot projects are running within DEMETER and grouped into five pilot clusters: arable crops, irrigated crops, fruit and vegetable production, livestock, and the supply chain. These pilots, running in 18 European countries, demonstrate and evaluate how agricultural innovations benefit from interoperability mechanisms. Led by Walton Institute, the project consists of 60 partners bringing together farmers and farmers’ organisations, academic institutions, and small and large public and private organisations representing the demand and supply side of the agricultural value chain. For more information, visit www.h2020-demeter.eu SmartAgriHubs SmartAgriHubs is a €20m H2020 project that aims to realise the digitisation of European agriculture by fostering an agricultural innovation ecosystem dedicated to excellence, sustainability and success. The consortium of over 164 partners in the European agri-food sector includes a diverse network of startups, SMEs, business and service providers,
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