AGreen’Smart is a project aiming to link the added-values gathered from the use of digital technologies in crop farming and animal husbandry (respectively precision agriculture and precision livestock farming), and related tools to valorize data (big data, artificial intelligence or robotics) and the mitigation and adaptation to climate change for a more sustainable agriculture, including economic, environmental and social challenges. AGreen’Smart will focus on the achievement of these environmental and climate-change goals (the “Green” part) through the use of digital technologies (the “Smart” part) in agriculture. For the two last decades, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has centered the support to the producer and increasingly put environmental at the center of the conditions for financial support. The current CAP (2014-2020) is promoting sustainable farming and innovation in order to strengthen the competitiveness of the sector. The post-2020 CAP (2021-2027) guideline has been already described and three of its nine objectives focus on dealing with environmental and climate change challenges. In addition, in 2019, following the declaration of “a smart and sustainable digital future for European agriculture and rural areas”, practically all Member States mentioned the crucial inputs of new technologies and digitization in agriculture to support “a higher environmental and climate ambition” in this new CAP. Nevertheless, the adoption of these technologies by farmers is still low in EU, and their role to ensure the achievement of these “green” ambitions is still blurry. That is why AGreen’Smart wants to improve the training of the young generation of engineers to understand and to be aware of the importance of considering technologies as levers of the improvements of agricultural practices to be more adapted to current context of climate in different European regions and to reach their sustainability. Our program aims to answer these issues through the following objectives and activities by: - establishing and continuing a high-quality European teaching network on different and transdisciplinary subjects; - maintaining perennial European partnerships between Higher Education Institutes, in the pedagogical and research domains, public authorities and private companies for the improvement of higher education that is more in agreement with the professional and labour market needs; - training three student cohorts over the program and by providing transdisciplinary skills in agriculture, use of digital technologies in crop farming and animal husbandry, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, sustainable agriculture and agroecology; - providing to a large public the possibility to improve their knowledge about the previously cited domains through the construction of a catalogue of open access online courses; - cultivating research partnerships between Higher Education Institutes and the professional sector for the development of innovative technologies for a more sustainable agriculture where benefits could reach the most important end-users of this sector: the farmers; - developing a continuous training offer, leading to the development of a full master program about “smart and green agriculture” for the next generation of engineers who will be in permanent contact with the socio-professional sector and the farmers during their career. The partners involved in AGreen’Smart offer a synergistic cooperation through different and complementary topics useful for this project: crop and animal sciences, precision agriculture and precision livestock farming, robotics, big data and artificial intelligence, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, sustainable agriculture and agroecology. The geographical diversity of the partners (Portugal and Greece for the Southern region, Sweden, Finland and Norway for the Northern region, France and Belgium from the Central Western region) is covering different impact degrees of climate change, where each farmer has different adaptation of their practices and where public authorities, related to agriculture sector, have adapted their strategies, from the general policy developed by EU through the CAP. The inclusion of crop and animal sectors, and their association, are also very important as they are both contributing to climate change and will interest a wider public. Last but not least, each partner is strongly involved at regional, national or international levels in professional organizations and networks of companies, farmers and other end-users in the sector. The project is therefore also the opportunity for the team to bring together these professional partners for their own benefit, as well as to assure the proper promotion and transfer of these new technologies to the end-users.
The AGreenSmart project had two main objectives: (i) to develop a new cursus treating the main challenges of current agriculture and animal husbandry practices and (ii) to train the new generation of farmers, technicians, engineers, deciders, researchers and entrepreneurs on the roles of technologies (sensors, robotics, decision support tools, artificial intelligence, modelling) to enhance the sustainability and the adaptability of those agricultural practices to cope with the above-mentioned challenges. In addition, the seven (7) partner universities of the project (Junia Lille, France / Helsingin Yliopisto, Finland / Norges Miljø- og Biovitenskapelige Universitet, Norway / Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Sweden / Université de Liège Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Belgium / Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal) were chosen to also integrate the different contexts occurring in each country in terms of agricultural politics, use of technologies and the diverse practices to try to find solutions on the problematics linked to the different challenges.
The AGreenSmart project was built within a context where the European agriculture is in a transition period regarding major challenges such as the availability and the integration of technological and agricultural innovations among the practices, the crisis linked to the climate change or to achieve economically viable, socially acceptable and environment-friendly agriculture, which are the three pillars of sustainability. Five of the ten objectives of the new common agricultural policy of the European Union are directly linked to the topics treated by the project. Currently, several universities suggest already trainings oriented to the domains of agriculture and/or technology but separately, and AGreenSmart wanted to highlight the links between the technologies, the agricultural practices and the challenges linked to the climate change and sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry. The interdisciplinarity of the project was essential to actively participate to the training of the new generation of farmers, technicians, engineers, deciders, researchers and entrepreneurs.