The aim of the coordinated project is: "Development of a platform for monitoring and digitizing agriculture, which will act as a Woody Crop Observatory to reach sustainability and competitiveness of the sector while bringing the process of primary production closer to digital society".
This ambitious general objective can be attained only through the collaboration of experts in a multidisciplinary coordinated project that assembles three individual projects. This coordinated project will fulfil the required tasks through the collaboration and the establishment of synergies between three different public entities: Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (UPV), Universidad de Valencia (UV) and Instituto Madrileño de Investigación y Desarrollo Rural, Agrario y Alimentario (IMIDRA). The selection of partners has been carefully made considering: (i) their experience in similar and previous projects that guarantees their expertise research field, and their knowledge of the sector, (ii) their capacity in transferring and disseminating the results to the society and finally, (iii) their previous collaborations and synergies already created that will ensure a fully operative consortium. The starting point of AGRICULTURE6.0 project is the knowledge and experiences acquired in our previous scientific studies and projects. The interaction between the different sub-projects (SP) is indicated in the proposed Work Plan as well as in the Specific Objectives of the project. Furthermore, it should be noted that AGRICULTURE6.0 project goal is to provide continuity to some previous and current collaborations established between UPV-IMIDRA and UPV-UV, which can be seen through multiple publications materialized from previous researches and through previous national research projects related to the development of new cropping and harvesting system assisted by ICT tools. The coordinator will be responsible of the scientific and technical coordination and will ensure the cooperation between the research groups with the aim of guarantee the project success.
This project was born out of a need observed over the years. The agriculture is facing huge competitiveness that comes, in most cases, from products imported. Additionally, some studies estimated that only 25% of farmers in Europe have some element of precision agriculture, compared to 66% in the USA or 84% in Canada. Precision agriculture is being adopted to a greater extent in larger areas. Spain is one of the countries in Europe with smaller plots. This reason may be slowing down the adoption of digital agriculture in Spain. The situation above has to be solved if we expect to have a strong, sustainable and competitive agricultural sector compared with other developed countries. Thus, it is essential to demonstrate the multiple benefits of digitalization to farmers to have a sustainable and competitive sector. Digital agriculture is being implemented throughout the world, maximizing productivity and competitiveness and minimizing the impacts of the primary sector. Gathering accurate and updated information of farming sites provides huge benefits to researchers, educational community, and, why not, to create agricultural tourism. The proposed project is based on a different approach to facilitate the adoption of digitalization in agriculture. The combination of Living Labs and a Lighthouse will be the core of integrating farmers, agroindustry, and society in our project. Disruptive technologies such as Low Power Wireless Area Networks (LPWAN) combined with other short-range established wireless technologies in a heterogeneous network, multisprectal images, 3D point-cloud maps and AI-based algorithms intelligently processing massive data (AI and Big Data) are going to be integrated in order to achieve our goal. Based on the data sensed from crops, weather, and soil, AI systems fueled by machine learning and deep learning techniques, and the knowledge of farmers and experts, will provide a series of recommendations to assist them in the ecological transition to a more sustainable agriculture.
Keywords of the coordinated project: Woody Crop observatory, Wireless Sensor Network, Big Data, Artificial intelligence, environmental monitoring, Sustainability, Digital Farming.