Smart/precision agriculture was one of the key topics in the revised Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of TP Organics published in 2014. Therefore, TP Organics now looks at ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) as a means to support organic agriculture in increasing its performance.

In cooperation with many experts TP Organics has prepared an inventory that lists prior research and the available state of the art technology. The full inventory is available here

Concerning ICT and IoT there are more similarities between organic and conventional farming than that there are differences.

However organic farming has specific machinery and communication needs and urgencies in e.g. soil management or pest control, as alternatives to non-allowed synthetic pesticides are not satisfactory and lead to high production costs. But even these areas overlap.

TP Organics states: "Although we focused on some examples from organic agriculture, we strongly support the idea to combine organic and conventional farming, recognizing the need for some work to be carried out especially with the organic sector as a pioneer able to open up spaces and tools for low input and conventional farming." 

The experts identified a number of needs of (organic) agriculture across sub sectors (from animal husbandry to viticulture) and across scopes (within farms/companies and/or along the value chain):

• Resource efficiency (primarily at company/farm level)
• Risk management
• Compliance
• Weed control (primarily crop sectors)
• Goods monitoring & control
• Product portfolio enrichment
• Communication, coordination and collaboration (mainly along value chain)
• International trading (mainly along value chain)
• Technological issues

TP Organics invite you to take part in the online consultation until September 21: http://ow.ly/PYIUx